Cat and Mouse
by Bidwench
Summary: Sometimes the cat wins, and sometimes it's the mouse.
1. Chapter 1

Cat and mouse. Interesting game. Most of the time, I'm definitely the mouse, but sometimes I feel the inner cat in me come out. This was one of those times. I'd managed to round up my latest skip without winding up in the dumpster, either literally or figuratively. That meant I actually had money ahead for a change, instead of having to fish between the sofa cushions for spare change to buy a jar of olives. With a little luck, I might even manage some Ben and Jerry's, or a real meal in a restaurant where they served water instead of fast food or takeout. The possibilities unrolled before me, and I felt myself relax for the first time all day.

The eye candy sitting next to me didn't hurt my mood any either, of course. Taut skin just the color of a perfect Mocha Latte from Dunkin' Donuts, and hair that was finally grown out enough to club back in his trademark ponytail. Sculpted features, well, sculpted everything and that certain aura of sexuality ensured that Ranger turned heads wherever he went. Today, of course, his head was turned towards me, and I reveled in the attention.

I sent him a sultry look from underneath sooty eyelashes. I'd made sure they were sooty by springing for an extra coat or two of mascara this morning, and my tee shirt had a low scooped neck that showed my somewhat modest assets to their full advantage. Ranger chuckled low in his throat at some double-edged comment I had made, and I slid my finger around the rim of my water glass in a practiced seductive maneuver. I'd managed to get an audible chuckle out of him instead of the usual fleeting smile, so chalk one up for me. I mentally preened as his finger wound slowly around a lock of my hair, pulling me closer, the other hand playing idly around the top edge of my shirt, knuckles sliding along the exposed edge of my cleavage.

It's funny how the details of some situations stick in your mind forever. My parents talked about what they were doing when Kennedy was shot. For my generation, it was where we were when the towers fell. But sometimes, it's something a lot more mundane, a lot more personal. I'd always thought that was an overdone cliché until just this minute in the middle of the sub shop. I had just devoured a Classic Italian, and Ranger had opted for some vegetarian thing that didn't seem worth the bother to me, when suddenly it was like all the air got sucked out of the room, leaving behind a silence so profound it was as loud as a shout, and I literally flinched from it.

When I turned my head, I found myself looking at the front door. Or who had walked in the front door, at any rate. Joe stood silhouetted in the sunlight, with his brother Tony behind him on one side, and his cousin Mooch on the other. I knew they'd planned to refinish the hardwood floors downstairs at Joe's house this morning, but I hadn't thought they'd finish so soon. Or that they would come into the sub shop where I was having lunch with Ranger after dropping off my latest skip downtown. All three were still wearing work clothes, and it was like the dust motes stood still, framing them forever in that moment.

I went to pull away, but Ranger's fingers were wound through my curls. Before I could disentangle myself, Joe had disappeared, leaving Tony and Mooch unmoved. I wriggled out of the booth and walked warily over to Tony and Mooch, my face burning. "This isn't what it looks like," I explained, all the while knowing full well it was exactly what it had looked like. I hadn't let myself think too deeply about the game I'd been playing, and now it looked like it was coming up to bite me in the ass. Flirting with Ranger, sneaking kisses and intimate moments hadn't seemed like such a big deal while I'd been doing it, but the reality of it suddenly smacked me in the head hard. Joe's face had gone bone white right before he'd bolted, and the look in his eyes made me sick to my stomach. I recognized that look. It was the one I'd worn on my own face when I'd caught Dickie with Joyce Barnhardt.

I pushed through the door just as Joe's SUV pulled away from the curb. I motioned to him, but he kept his face averted from me. I frantically started running possible scenarios through my head. What had he seen? How much explaining would I have to do? Would I be able to salvage this? I thought hard, and I thought fast, then realized that Mooch and Tony had walked up behind me.

I looked over at them, and tried on my best, brightest smile. "Well, that didn't go well," I cheerfully explained, like I hadn't a care in the world. "I'm going to have to catch up with Joe and explain what was going on." My heart beat frantically inside my ribs, and I hoped my nervousness wasn't showing on the outside, but I could hear it in every breathless phrase, in every squeak of my voice. "I know that looked bad, but it wasn't what it seemed." There. Say something with enough conviction, and people will believe you. And if I could convince Mooch and Tony, odds were that they would help me convince Joe. Everything would be okay, really.

"Bullshit."

I did a double take. Mooch was usually so laid back as to be practically catatonic. Strong opinions weren't something he usually went in for. Before I could draw in a breath to argue with Mooch, Tony turned on me.

"So you think stringing my brother along, making him look like a fool is fun, huh? That's how you get your kicks?"

"No!" I argued. "It's not like that."

"It's exactly like that," Tony told me, his disgust obvious in the way he leaned away from me, as if I were somehow unclean and he didn't want to risk accidentally coming in contact with me. Tony and I had never been close, but he'd teased me casually at the Morelli family get-togethers I'd attended with Joe, and I thought he liked me well enough. This Tony I didn't even recognize. "Stay the hell away from my brother," he warned.

"Tony, I have to talk to him. I have to explain," I said frantically.

"You've done enough, Stephanie," Tony said quietly, the bluster suddenly gone, leaving him just sad and distant. "Just leave him alone."

I'd left Ranger sitting in the booth, an enigmatic look on his face. I had no idea what he was thinking, but that really wasn't anything new. I rarely knew what he was thinking. In the meantime, I knew my priority had to be finding Joe and smoothing things over. I was sure I'd be able to explain things. _I'd had lots of practice_. Wait. I shook my head. That's not what I meant. I hate when that happens. I meant that I'd be able to explain things because after all, nothing had really happened. "_This time_," that small voice inside my head chimed again, more insistently. I could usually shut that voice up if I downed enough sugar, but right now my stomach was still turning somersaults and my trusty donut stash was depleted. I purposefully shook off that nagging voice and made my way over to my car; granted my legs were a little shaky. Probably just leftover adrenaline from the takedown earlier today, I tried to convince myself. I knew I was lying to myself, but it had become such a habit I couldn't seem to stop. In any event, Joe would understand. That was what Joe did—he understood. I'd explain that … okay, just how would I explain Ranger's hand tangled in my hair while the other hand was halfway down my shirt? Think Stephanie. I knew it would have to be good because while Joe trusted me, and wanted to believe me, I'd been stretching things pretty thin about my increasingly intimate moments with Ranger, and Joe wasn't stupid.

Okay, I'd say that Ranger and I were working a case. Yeah, that was it. I'd tell him that I was helping Ranger try to catch somebody, kind of like the decoy work I used to do for him, only this time I was pretending to be Ranger's girlfriend. Yeah. And if Joe got loud about it, I'd get a little defensive myself, about how it was only work, and he was wrong to get upset about it, and that he should trust me.

"_But he can't_." Jeez, I wish that voice would shut the hell up, already. Okay, maybe I had pushed the envelope a little bit with Ranger, but _nothing happened_. Belatedly remembering the feel of Ranger's mouth on my doo-dah after he'd climbed into my bed while we were supposed to be looking for his missing daughter last year, I amended that. _Almost nothing happened_. Okay, we hadn't had sex. Granted, we hadn't had sex because Joe had chosen that moment to show up at my front door, but the point is, I hadn't had actual sex with Ranger since the one time when Joe and I were broken up. So really, I didn't have anything to feel guilty about, because there hadn't been any sex. Therefore, I hadn't cheated, and Joe had no right to be upset with me. I nodded to myself, desperately needing my own affirmation. And I would go explain that to Joe, and Mooch and Tony could kiss my ass. What business was it of theirs what I did anyway? This was between me and Joe, thank you very much, and they could just stay out of it.

"_Except you were there in the middle of the Burg, in the middle of the day, right in front of God and everybody_. _You had to know you were going to get caught eventually_."

I frantically dug through my glove compartment at the next traffic light. I remembered throwing in a package of Kit-Kats last week while I was staking out one of my wilier skips. I was in desperate need of chocolate. Nothing but orange wrappers mocked me, every smidgeon of chocolate long gone. I had sat out in front of Sonny Pilasky's house for four solid hours before he'd showed up, drunk and staggering wildly from his car to the front door where I'd handily maneuvered him into a pair of cuffs before he even realized I was there. During those four hours, of course, I had managed to munch my way through an economy pack of Kit Kats, leaving not even a chocolate sliver behind. I sighed in frustration, and put the car back in gear as the light changed. I made a quick right on Slater and slowed in front of Joe's house. His SUV wasn't in front, and I when I circled the block, I didn't see it on the alley side either.

Okay, regroup here. Obviously, he'd gone for a drive to cool off. I tried his cell, but it went straight to voicemail. I hung up. Called the house phone, and left a message there, using my best apologetic voice. Not too apologetic, of course, because I really hadn't done anything wrong, and I let just a little bit of impatience creep in since Joe's reaction had just been so unreasonable. Yeah, that would work. That was the tactic. What is it they say? A good defense starts with a good offense? If I could turn it around and put Joe on the defensive, I might be able to salvage this yet.

"_And do what with it_?"

"Shut UP!" I yelled, drawing the attention of old Mr. Galesky, out watering his flower beds wearing those ugly plaid Bermuda shorts that gave Joe such fits. We'd laid in bed one night last summer, too hot to sleep after sex so hot we'd both almost spontaneously combusted, and started laughing over Mr. Galesky's shorts. We speculated about whether they dated from the Eisenhower administration, or the Kennedy Camelot days, and then dissolved in laughter making up stories about all the sights those shorts had probably seen. It had tickled Joe's funny bone, and I knew he'd had to really fight to keep a straight face ever since then whenever he walked Bob and Mr. Galesky was outside parading around in those ridiculous shorts, knobby knees poking out the bottom like a couple of cue-balls on sticks, white socks bunched around his skinny ankles. Mr. Galesky gave me a fishy look, and I managed a sickly smile and a little finger wave in return.

I decided to head over to my parents' house. I could have gone on into the office, but I really wasn't up to making explanations to Connie or Lula. To be honest, I wasn't really up to making explanations to myself right now. I felt kind of let down since I'd lost my head of steam. I'd been all set to finesse Joe, but he wasn't answering. I'd have to wait, and that had never been easy for me. In the heat of the moment, I always felt like I could take on the devil himself, but given time and space I invariably started thinking too much. _Maybe a little thinking wouldn't be such a bad thing_. I rolled my eyes at myself, and deliberately tuned out that damnable voice. I put my brain on autopilot and made the last turn onto my parents' street. I wanted to sit in my mother's kitchen, surrounded by the faded formica and outdated wallpaper that had been there as long as I could remember with the comforting smell of supper cooking on the stove. I needed to cocoon myself in that safe place where my mother could fix all my childhood ills with a bandaid and a slice of cake.

I let myself in the front door, and wandered through the dining room and back into the kitchen. I knew exactly where my mother would be in the middle of the afternoon. Most of the time, that kind of predictability left me feeling stifled, but there were times when I certainly needed it. Today was one of those times. My mother was dutifully standing at the stove, stirring something in a pot, an apron tied around her waist, and the steam from the pot turning her hair into a riot of corkscrew curls. Funny, I'd never noticed that before. She usually went in before serving supper to make sure her hair was all smoothed back into place, and I hadn't seen her with her hair curling over her forehead in years. I ran a tentative hand through my own wayward curls, recognizing the similarity on some level while the adolescent in me still rebelled at being anything like my mother.

My mother gave me a tight smile, then turned back to the stove, carefully fitting the lid on top of the roiling pot. I drew in a deep breath. The phone had already been ringing, then. "What are you making?" I asked, anxious to keep the conversation from veering off into places I didn't want to go.

"Pot roast and new potatoes," she answered, then sent me a sideways glance. "Are you and Joseph staying for dinner?" she asked pointedly, and I knew my transparent attempt to put her off hadn't worked at all. This was nothing new, she had been that way ever since I was a kid. Grandma Mazur always seemed to enjoy my little forays into distraction and fantasy, and my father had generally been oblivious, but somehow my mother's eyes could always see through whatever machinations I tried. Whether it was trying to fly off the roof or playing choo-choo with Joe Morelli when I was a kid to skipping school or losing my virginity when I was a teenager, somehow my mother knew everything. Still, my pride determined that I had to try.

"I'm not sure," I hedged. No way was I going to admit that I didn't know where Joe was or what his plans were, because then I'd have to admit what had happened at the sub shop, and I wasn't entirely sure my mother would be on my side. And to be honest, that pesky voice in my head wasn't exactly on my side either.

I watched my mother's lips tighten, and mentally braced myself for the onslaught of well-meaning advice. "I just hope you know what you're doing, Stephanie. I would hate to see you get hurt."

I must have sat at the table for a solid minute, waiting for her to catch her breath and really lay into me. I had expected a long litany of negative comparisons to the usual suspects, comprised primarily of the perfect progeny of my mother's coffee cronies. I was prepared to listen to the wonders of Mrs. Fishbein's daughter Joann the doctor all the way down to my cousin Christine who worked at the button factory, and every similarly-aged female within my mother's acquaintance. She was going to let me off with a paltry hope I knew what I was doing and didn't want to see me get hurt. Funny, it sounded remarkably like her "birds and the bees" talk that uncomfortable year I'd been fourteen. I hadn't told her that Crazy Carl Costanza and I had been practicing french kissing each other for the past year and a half back behind Giovicchini's Meat Market. For sure, she would have told me again that she hoped I knew what I was doing and that I wouldn't get hurt. That was, of course, the whole point. Neither Carl nor I had known what we were doing, but we could trust each other for practice without anything getting squishy on us later. Probably that's why I could never see Carl as a potential date once we got into high school, either. In my mind, he was either perpetually nine years old stepping on the backs of my white patent leather shoes and making me trip in the aisle at church on the way to make my first communion or else I could only see oversized adam's apple bobbing like mad above my eyebrow before we closed in and squished noses for what seemed like the seventy-third time. Eventually we got the hang of the whole head-tilting thing, but I think it's safe to say that neither Carl nor I was a natural when it came to kissing.

When the silence continued to stretch interminably, and it was obvious she wasn't going to say anything else, I finally gave in, probably just like she figured. Damn. "I'll be fine, Mom," I answered almost by rote, just exactly the way I had when I was fourteen and getting the birds and the bees lecture. And again when I was sixteen and she'd caught me crying my eyes out in the upstairs bathroom after Joe had left for the Navy without saying a word to me after I'd given up my virginity to him on the floor of the Tasty Pastry. I quickly grabbed a stack of plates out of the cupboard and headed into the dining room to set the table before she could look at me too closely. She still had that all-knowing thing going on from my childhood, and if I didn't want to find my guts spilled all over her kitchen, I'd better make sure I avoided direct eye contact. And just to be safe, I wasn't going to let the back of her head anywhere near me either. Just in case I saw a stray eyeball back there or something. I quickly made the sign against the evil eye, something I hadn't done since last Christmas Eve when Joe's Grandma Bella had come and sat next to me at the Morelli Christmas party.

I slammed the plates down on the table in my usual slapdash way, making sure the trivet covered up the spot where Grandma Mazur shot the chicken in the gumpy. Best not give my mother any excuses. After her extraordinary restraint in the kitchen just now, I knew it wouldn't take much to set her off ranting, and I was honestly just a little too frazzled to deal with my mother right then. I punched in the speed dial for Joe's cell phone, then snapped the thing shut in frustration when it went straight to voice mail again.

Okay, fine. He was pissed. I'd stay here and eat some dinner, maybe let my Dad beat me at pinochle, then head on over to Joe's after he'd had a chance to calm down and cool off. Yeah, that would work. And besides, I'm a firm believer in putting off the uncomfortable. Preferably forever, if you can, but definitely until after dinner.

I plopped myself down on the sofa next to my father. He was muttering unintelligible arguments to Bill O'Reilly on the Factor. I couldn't figure that one out. I don't think my father had any particular political leanings one way or the other as long as his dinner was on time and nobody messed with his sports teams, but he'd taken up talking to Bill O'Reilly before supper. I guess as long as O'Reilly didn't answer back there wasn't too much to worry about, and at least it was easier to explain to the neighbors than Grandma Mazur's penchant for Pay per View porn.

"Shit for brains," my father muttered. I didn't know if that was directed at O'Reilly, O'Reilly's overly agitated guest or me. I guess it could have applied equally to any of the three of us if I was really going to be honest about it.

My dad made a rude Italian hand gesture at the screen as O'Reilly faded to a breathless commercial about home equity loans. He shifted around in his barcalounger some, then looked past my left ear. "So you serious about that Negr—Mexican guy? Rooster?" That's my dad. Politically incorrect as they come and about as tactful as the average moose wading through a tea shop. I smiled in spite of myself.

"Ranger, Dad. Not Rooster." He made a dismissive gesture. Unless a nickname was Italian, it didn't register in my father's lexicon. "And he's Cuban-American, not Mexican." Again with the dismissive gesture, telling me to cut to the chase and answer the real question already. Unusual tactic for my father, but then we only had two minutes for the commercial break, and I was pretty sure he was ready to tune back in to O'Reilly as soon as the time was up. "And no," I elaborated. "We just work together." If I was going to start covering my ass, I might as well start at home since the ass-covering at the sub shop hadn't gone quite so well. Besides, there was no way I could tell my father about my hormonal overloads when I was around Ranger. There are some things that fathers and daughters just don't discuss in Italian families. Said daughter's libido ranks pretty high on that list. I'm pretty sure most Italian fathers convince themselves that their daughters all have immaculate conceptions just like the Virgin Mary, and I certainly wasn't going to disabuse _my_ Italian father. When push came to shove, I'm pretty sure my father liked to think I slept in the guest room at Joe's house instead of having balls to the wall sex on every available flat surface, too.

My father's eyes locked with mine and he didn't blink. "I would ask what kind of work you think you're doing, but I'm not sure I want to know." He raised his eyebrows at me and gave me a level look. I couldn't help myself, I started squirming. Jeez, I'd forgotten he could be like this. Usually it was my mother who "handled things", but on occasion when things had gotten really out of hand with me or Valerie growing up, Dad would sit us down for "the talk." My father didn't say a lot during those "talks", but he had a way of making sure we did plenty of talking. Instinct kicked in, and I opened my mouth, ready to sing like a canary, but my father cut me off with an abrupt gesture. "You'll always be my daughter, _mia piccola_, and I want you to be happy. But you're playing with fire here, and somebody is going to get hurt. I don't want it to be you." He gave me a final definitive nod, and turned back to the television screen, just in time for O'Reilly's summary. A few minutes later, my father rose from his chair as O'Reilly's logo signed off and I heard his heavy tread move ponderously toward the dining room table, the familiar slide of the chair being pulled back, and the almost indiscernible protest of the chair's wooden slats as my father sank down into the seat at the head of the table. I heard the reassuring clink of china and tableware moving, and moved to join my parents at the dinner table. Time, tide, and pot roast waited for no one, especially in the Burg. It didn't matter if your whole world had started to crumble around you, the pot roast went on.

My appetite had kind of deserted me after the whole talk with my father, and my mother silently bundled up enough leftovers to feed a small army. I think she was worried that Joe and I might really be through this time, and she wasn't opposed to pulling out all the stops to do her part to salvage things. The more I thought about it, the more worried I got, so I wasn't about to turn down any ammunition she might care to send with me. I had plenty of roast beef wrapped up tight in aluminum foil, and if that didn't do the trick I was armed with both spice cake and chocolate pudding. Now that my earlier bravado had the chance to wear off, I was left with a sinking feeling that I might need all the help I could get.

I heaved a sigh of relief when I pulled up in front of the row house on Slater. The lights were on downstairs, so Joe had made it home. I held the bag of leftovers to my chest like a shield and walked slowly up the walk. I briefly considered knocking, then decided that wouldn't look good. Joe had given me the key to his house years before, just as he had a key to my apartment. Knocking just seemed awkward, so I fitted my key into the lock and swung the door open. It only opened halfway, and I pushed the rest of the way in. A stack of boxes stood behind the door, partially blocking it from opening all the way. I didn't see Joe in the livingroom, and my curiosity got the best of me. I folded back the flap on the top box and looked inside. A bag of hamster food, my old running shoes, a couple pair of underwear, half a bottle of my favorite root beer shampoo, some miscellaneous hair doo-dads and makeup. I felt my stomach drop. Just as suddenly as it had appeared, my curiosity left me in a rush. I had no desire to see what was in the other boxes. None whatsoever. I backed away slowly as if they would grow arms and come after me, and walked right into the end table, sending the lamp flying across the livingroom rug. I turned to watch its progress, and flinched when I saw Joe casually leaning against the kitchen door frame, the first two fingers of his right hand loosely holding an open beer bottle by the neck. I put my hand to my chest to still the pounding of my heart. "You scared me!" I managed to choke out.

"Did I?" He seemed to consider that for a minute, then moved with catlike grace to the sofa. Choosing the end farthest from me, he sprawled himself across two cushions, affecting a relaxed post, but his eyes were those of a predator. "Good," he said with finality.

I drew in a deep breath. "Joe, I really think we need to talk."

Joe shook his head slowly. "Nothing left to say, Stephanie. Your things are by the door."

I moved forward to go over to him, but he glared at me with such venom that I stopped in my tracks. "There are some things I need to say to you, Joe," I began, but he cut me off before I could go any further.

"What are you going to say to me, Stephanie? Huh? What?" He looked around the room as if gathering his thoughts. "You're going to say what—that Manoso's hand on your breast wasn't what it looked like? That all the times people have seen you with his tongue down your throat they all just had the wrong idea?" He jumped up and started pacing, a feral cat stuck in a cage and looking desperately for a way out. I pushed myself up small against the wall and stayed there, my eyes never moving from Joe. "I gave you chance after chance after CHANCE to level with me, Stephanie, and you never did!" The final words were practically growled.

I felt hot choking tears gather behind my eyes because I knew he was right. Still, I felt driven to salvage our relationship. "Joe, listen to me. I only ever had sex with Ranger once, and that was a long time ago after you broke up with me." It all came out in a rush, but I had to get it in there.

The look he gave me withered me on the spot. "After DeChooch?" he asked. I nodded assent.

"That was the only time," and technically, it had been.

Joe laughed, an ugly, bitter sound. "Bullshit."

"No, Joe, I swear to you, that was the only time."

Joe gave me a look that would have melted glass, his derision written plainly across his face. "So when did you become a white house intern, Stephanie? Huh? Just how do you define 'sex'? What? It doesn't count if you don't have an orgasm? It doesn't COUNT if he just goes down on you? It doesn't COUNT if his cock isn't inside you? Huh? Is that it?" He stopped for a minute and took a swig from his beer bottle. My mouth was so dry I couldn't say a word. "Let me ask you this, then. If it had been my hand on some other woman's breast, or my tongue buried between some woman's legs, would it have been sex then?" His eyes drilled into me, and I finally dropped my gaze.

"Yes," I whispered.

Joe just nodded and looked at me like I was something unclean he had found in the gutter. "Get out, Stephanie," he said wearily. "And don't come back."

I stumbled down the steps then and didn't look back. Somehow I made it back to my apartment on autopilot. I knew there was no way I could put on a neutral face for old Mrs. Bestler in the elevator, so I pulled myself up the stairs instead, let myself into my silent apartment and twisted the deadbolt behind me.

My legs wouldn't carry me any further. I slid down the back of my door, knees drawn up to my chest and just stayed there, head resting on my knees, for what seemed like forever. I was afraid to move, afraid something would jar loose inside of me and I'd start screaming and never be able to stop. What had I done? What had I been thinking? I shook my head in denial, still not wanting to think about what I was doing with my life. _You can't have your cake and eat it too_.

Great. Just my luck. Jiminy Cricket had taken up permanent residence in my brain. Where had he been hiding when I could have really used him, before I was up to my ass in alligators? Okay, reality check. The naked truth was that I'd been alternately shoving sugar and hot sex at old Jiminy for _years_ in increasingly desperate attempts to shut him up. Apparently, he'd climbed to the top of the Big Rock Candy Sex Mountain and was going to chirp for all he was worth now, and there was nothing I could do about it. So start singing already, Jiminy.

Okay, first of all, Jiminy was right. I couldn't have my cake and eat it too as any fool knew. I couldn't have the security and sanctuary of Joe's love and the dangerous excitement of playing around with Ranger behind Joe's back. The two were mutually incompatible. Bad call on my part, even if I didn't like to admit it to myself. It was pretty unfair to demand fidelity and monogamy from Joe when I'd been stealing kisses and more with Ranger. Joe had been right about that. If the situation had been reversed, and it had been him messing around with someone else, I'd have taken his gonads off with a dull spoon. And fed them to him. Instead, I'd made a fool of him, and in front of his friends and family. I remembered how completely humiliated I'd felt when word got around about Dickie screwing that skank whore Joyce Barnhardt and me catching them in the act. I'd felt like a million fingers were pointing straight at me, and like people were snickering at me behind their hands because I was such a loser that my own husband would pick a two-bit loser like Joyce over me. If I was going to be honest with myself, most of the time I still felt like that.

Admittedly, knowing I had two hot guys after me did a lot to assuage my bruised ego, but I really didn't want to go there either. I'd never thought of myself as particularly shallow or selfish, and this introspection was getting more than a little uncomfortable. I didn't want to think about using Joe or Ranger as an emotional bandaid, or worse—some kind of trophy male crutch. And if I'd made Joe feel even half as bad as Dickie had made me feel, I'd never forgive myself. Okay. Honesty time again. Of course I'd made Joe feel that bad. Granted, we weren't actually married, but we were an accepted couple in the Burg, and we'd had a monogamous if somewhat ill-defined form of commitment going on. We had always talked in "probablies". Probably we would get married. Probably we would have kids. Probably this and probably that, all the way to probably we were faithful. The only problem with that last probably was that I knew Joe had been, and now we both knew I hadn't been. So probably he'd never forgive me.

I remembered the broken look on his face when he'd told me to leave and I shivered. No probably about it.

And that left Ranger. Ranger and whatever-the-hell it was that we had between us. Our non-relationship relationship, I guess. Stealing kisses and sneaking a feel now and again. Hot whispers in clandestine places. But no commitment, no strings, nothing "stupid" like rings or children. Was that enough? Was it what I wanted, or just as importantly, what did he want? Had he "won" by default now that Joe was out of the picture?

I was exhausted, emotionally drained, and empty, but I knew I would never sleep. I'd been bouncing along letting life and the wind carry me wherever they would until I'd smacked face first into a brick wall today. It had left a figurative knot in my head, in my heart, and in my gut. Until I figured out what to do with that knot, there wouldn't be any rest. My knees had stiffened up while I sat hunched against the door, and I unfolded myself with some difficulty. I stomped the feeling back into my numb legs until the pins and needles distracted me from the lump in my throat. I fished my cell phone out of my jeans pocket and flipped it open, punching in Ranger's number on speed dial. He answered on the second ring. "Yo, yourself. Can you come over? I need to talk to you."


	2. Chapter 2

I was exhausted, emotionally drained, and empty, but I knew I would never sleep. I'd been bouncing along letting life and the wind carry me wherever they would until I'd smacked face first into a brick wall today. It had left a figurative knot in my head, in my heart, and in my gut. Until I figured out what to do with that knot, there wouldn't be any rest. My knees had stiffened up while I sat hunched against the door, and I unfolded myself with some difficulty. I stomped the feeling back into my numb legs until the pins and needles distracted me from the lump in my throat. I fished my cell phone out of my jeans pocket and flipped it open, punching in Ranger's number on speed dial. He answered on the second ring. "Yo, yourself. Can you come over? I need to talk to you."

I made my way to the bathroom, my body bent over like an old woman, barely able to move. I splashed some water on my face and brushed my teeth, then hazarded a look in the mirror. Not such a good idea. Stress and tears never do much for my face anyway, and my mascara and eyeliner had all run together into one blackened mess till I looked like I had raccoon eyes, and my face was mottled and blotchy. I grabbed a washcloth and scrubbed my face bare, which didn't do anything good for the blotchiness, but at least it took care of the raccoon eyes. Sometimes you take what you can get. I scraped my hair back into a haphazard ponytail and called it good. When I emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, my own personal Batman was seated on my couch, looking for all the world like he belonged there. I started to get irritated about the ease with which he habitually broke into my apartment, but didn't have the energy. My heart just wasn't in it. I settled for a non-committal "Hey," instead.

"Babe."

Great. I desperately needed to find out what was going on with me, with him, with us, and he was making me pull words out of him one at a time. I didn't have time for that shit. "Joe and I broke up," I said baldly.

He gave his patented infinitesimal nod in response. He was not making this easy.

"So Joe no longer stands between us. Where do we go from here?" There. That should be plain enough for anyone, even Batman.

Ranger genuinely looked surprised. "Morelli was never an obstacle."

Now it was my turn to look surprised. "What do you mean?"

"Just that. That Morelli was never an obstacle. He was never the reason we weren't together," he said quietly.

News to me. "Then what was the reason?" I asked.

"You were."

"I don't understand." And I truly didn't.

Ranger leaned forward and balanced his elbows on his knees, then blew out his breath in a long sigh. He said nothing for a long moment, then nodded his head. "Okay, let me explain something. I'm not used to having to do that, so it may take a little bit. Stay with me, okay?"

I nodded. An actual explanation. Thank God. I certainly needed one after all the tapdancing we'd been doing around each other for the past several years.

"I don't believe in—Wait, that's not right," he cut himself off and started again. "I don't make moves on married women," he explained. I frowned. What did that have to do with me? I'd been divorced from Dickie for years, since long before I'd met Ranger. Seeing my confusion he continued. "No married women, but up until they're married, it's fair game. You see?" I shook my head. "Okay, let me start over. One time, back when I was still in the Army, my friend started going out with this girl. She was beautiful. Smart, funny, didn't take any shit off of anybody." He smiled in remembrance, and that smile made me uneasy. "They'd been going out a couple of weeks, and I thought to myself if I didn't make a play for her, I'd regret it the rest of my life." He paused, lost in thought for a few minutes, then picked up the thread of his story. "So I did. I pulled out all the stops. We had a … connection, I guess you'd call it. An awareness. Physical spark. Like what we have," he looked right into my eyes finally, and I nodded.

"What happened?" Part of me wanted to know and part of me didn't, but I had to ask.

"We'd spent the day hanging out. My buddy was on duty, but I wasn't. I'd made sure I wasn't. And I'd spent the day with her, getting closer, letting the sexual tension build. When I thought the time was right, I made my move. I leaned in close and kissed her. We were out on the beach, the sun was going down over the water, the lights were just starting to come on in the distance. Very romantic." Ranger shook his head slowly and he smiled mockingly.

"And she let loose the sweetest roundhouse punch I've ever seen in my life and knocked me flat on my ass, right there on the sand."

I surprised us both with a watery little laugh.

"Yeah," Ranger said. "Then she got right up in my face and asked me what the hell I thought I was doing. That she was crazy about Point, and she was talking love with a capital L, and I had no business messing with that. Told me she'd never felt like that about anybody before, and wasn't about to trade it for some quick roll in the sand. It didn't matter to her what kind of attraction there was between us, because she already knew what she wanted."

"What did you do?" I asked.

Ranger shook his head.

"No, I want to know. What did you do? Did you keep on coming after her anyway, the way you did with me? Did you make sure your buddy found out about the two of you? Was it a repeat of today? What did you do?" I was angry, I was hurt, and at this point misery was damn fond of company. "Did you—"

"I got drunk."

That shut me up, at least momentarily. "You don't drink," I protested.

"Not anymore."

I sat there expectantly, never looking away from him. I deserved an answer, and he wasn't leaving without giving me one. My determination must have shown in my face because he stood up and started pacing, his back turned to me as he started to speak.

"I got drunk, and I picked up this girl. And if I'd been sober, I would have realized she was way too young, and way too innocent, and way out of her element. But I didn't. I took her down on the beach, and I wasn't so drunk I didn't realize she was a virgin." He finally turned back to me, as he knew I realized he was talking about Rachel, Julie's mother. "And I cleaned her up and took her home, and made sure she knew how to get in touch with me if that night had any lasting repercussions."

I closed my eyes and nodded my head.

"Yeah, a few weeks later, she realized she was pregnant. So I arranged leave, went home to Miami and married her. Gave Julie my name, and made sure she never wanted for anything. And I hated it. I hated every single waking moment of it. I hated being tied to someone else, I hated the accountability, I hated the feeling like I couldn't breathe. All of it. And I swore I'd never do that again. End of story."

"And now?" I asked.

"And nothing's changed."

"Everything has changed," I argued. "Joe broke up with me."

"You still don't get it," he said.

"Then explain it to me!" I demanded.

"Morelli was never what kept us apart, Babe. You were. You didn't want me enough to dump Morelli and come to my bed, and you didn't want Morelli enough to tell me to go to hell. It's not about picking the best contestant, Babe, it's about knowing who and what you want. You wanted my attention, and we both know it. Yet you stayed in Morelli's bed, so you obviously still wanted him, too."

He sat back down, then, and regarded me quietly across the wide divide of my sofa. "Frankly, I never had much of a problem with it. I figured if you wanted monogamy and commitment, you knew where to go. I've never been the 'till death do us part' type, Babe, and I've been honest with you about that. I'm much more the 'as long as we're both happy' type. I've done the marriage gig, and I hated it. Every single minute of it. And I'll never go back there. It's not who I am."

"But you're talking about a forced marriage, Ranger, when you were really young. You don't know—"

"I _do_ know. Babe, I didn't come to this realization when I married Rachel. I've always felt this way. It's part of who and what I am."

"But still, now that you're older, maybe—" Okay, now he was really starting to piss me off. He was laughing at me. I looked around for something to hit him with, preferably something heavy and blunt.

"I'm not laughing at you," he protested. "I'm really not, okay? It's just that you sounded a lot like my mother."

His mother. Terrific. Just what I'd always wanted.

Ranger made a real effort to smooth his features. "I have a brother just younger than me, name's Marco." I nodded. I had known he had at least one brother and a couple of sisters, but that was about it. At least I had a name. "A couple of years ago, Marco came out to my parents." My eyes got big. Wow. "Yeah," Ranger continued. "Being gay is not widely accepted in the Latino community. It was really hard for my parents. Marco just couldn't take living the lie any more, though, and he knew he had to tell them. My father didn't say anything, just got up and walked out of the room. My mom, though, was convinced she could 'fix' him. Kept asking him how he knew he was gay if he'd never been with a woman. How if he just met the _right _woman, everything would work out."

Ranger moved in front of me and cradled my cold hands in his warm ones, sitting back on his haunches and looking up into my face. "Marco knew what he was, though. And I know what I am, Babe. If I could change for anyone, I'd do it for you. But I can't."

"You mean you won't," I accused him.

"It amounts to the same thing. I always knew where you were going with asking me what I thought about marriage, and about relationships. I didn't want to hurt you then, and I don't want to hurt you now, but my answer hasn't changed. I think relationships are great for people who want them. So is marriage. But neither of those are for me. I don't want to change that—I'm comfortable with the choices I've made and with who I am. I don't need fixing."

"Okay," I whispered. He'd been straight with me, I had to give him that, and if his veracity had made me uncomfortable; well, I really had noone else to blame but myself.

"Listen, I know the timing sucks, but I've got to go up to Boston for a few days."

"You spend a lot of time there now," I remarked.

He actually looked chagrined. "Yeah, well, I need to check in on Maggie. Some things were going on that need taking care of."

"Maggie?" I asked, really hating myself for going there, but what the hell—the day was already in the toilet anyway. It wasn't like another revelation could make it too much worse.

"The woman I told you about. Her name is Maggie, well, Magdalena. Tank and I check in on her once in awhile to make sure she's doing okay, take care of things if she needs it."

"What about your friend?"

"Killed by a roadside bomb during his second tour in the middle east," Ranger replied, his face giving nothing away, but I could tell by the tightness in his jaw that he still felt the loss keenly.

"I'm sorry," I said, feeling inadequate.

"So am I. They were really happy together, you know? Two little girls who don't even remember their daddy." He shook his head and stood up to leave. "I'll call you when I get back, make sure you're okay." He wrapped his arms around me and kissed me on the forehead. "You get some rest, do some thinking, figure out what you want from your life, Stephanie. I'm sorry if you got hurt in all this. I never meant to hurt you, or be part of anything that did. I'll still be here for you whenever you need me. Don't forget that."

I nodded sadly, and realized he was right. I had a lot of thinking to do.

Vinnie wasn't happy when I told him I was taking some time off. My last big score had netted me a decent cushion where I didn't need to go garbage runs, as I'd come to think of some of my messier captures. At least not for awhile. I'd also resorted to turning off my cell phone and unplugging my land line. After a frantic middle of the night visit from my mother, I'd agreed to check in with her every couple of days, but that was it. Push had finally come to shove, and I was having to do some serious thinking about my life, what I wanted out of it, and even what I wanted to be when I grew up. I realized right off that I'd been a woman without a clue or a plan for a long time, and that kind of haphazard approach, letting life just happen to me instead of being an active participant, wasn't really who I was. Or at least, it wasn't who I wanted to be.

I had kind of fallen into bounty hunting for Vinnie when my job went south. It had paid the bills, but it was basically a hand to mouth existence, and depended a lot on the vagaries of fate. Some days I hated my job, other days I got off on the adrenaline. Sometimes I felt like I had gone from one extreme to the other. I'd opted for safety and security first with marriage to Dickie Orr, then a safe but boring job buying women's discount briefs for EE Martin. When both of those had exploded in my face and I was down to hocking my appliances for food money, I'd gone to the other extreme. Chasing accused felons had never been something I'd aspired to. I'd taken that first job for Vinnie out of desperation, and landed Joe Morelli squarely back into my life after a long hiatus. We'd danced around for awhile before settling into a reasonable facsimile of a relationship. Somehow, several years later, I was still aimlessly dancing: with the job, with Joe, with everything. I lacked direction, ambition, and goals, and that was a pretty sorry state of affairs for a woman in her thirties. Granted, I wasn't _that _far into my thirties, but still.

So what did I _want_? That was the question of a lifetime. My lifetime, anyway. And that brought me back to the phone blackout. I didn't need to hear what my mother wanted, or what Lula, or Connie, or MaryLou wanted. Not even what Ranger wanted, assuming he was back from Boston, or what Joe wanted, assuming he would ever speak to me again. This was about my life, my choices, my decisions. I had to figure out who I was and what I wanted to do with my life. The one decision I'd come to thus far was that I knew what I didn't want: I didn't want to be aimless any more. I wanted to be in charge of my own destiny. And I didn't want my happiness to depend on a man or even multiple men. I had to be who I was for my own self and my own sake, not trying to fit myself into some mold I decided would make me more appealing to the men in my life. Correction: the men who had been, past tense, in my life. I hadn't heard from either Ranger or Joe since "Black Thursday" as I'd come to think of that day two weeks ago.

I hated to admit it, even to myself, but my need for male validation was more than just a little scary. Even though I was feeling more than a little lost without Joe or Ranger as my anchors, it was probably good for me to do this on my own, without hormones clouding my thinking. Probably.

Probably be the mother of my children. Probably get married. Suddenly, Joe's half-assed promises and probablies made me see red. I remembered the wide-eyed girl who had laid down behind the counter at the damn bakery, convinced that the sun rose and set in Joe Morelli's smile. I could still feel every kiss, every touch, every tingle as he'd taken my body on a ride I couldn't even imagine before that night. With every beat of my heart and every contraction of my body in the throes of its very first orgasm, I had built a dream. Joe telling me he loved me, only me. My father walking me down the aisle at the same church where we'd both made our first communion, with all the girls in my high school who had ever looked down on me or made me feel stupid looking on and grinding their teeth in frustration that I, Stephanie Plum, had managed to land the elusive Joe Morelli. Joe leading me up the stairs to our first apartment, where we'd make love all day, and I would be magically transformed into some domestic goddess who put Martha Stewart to shame. Probably we would have a perfect life.

Instead he had hitched up his jeans and waltzed out of my life without a backward glance, but with a telling poem on Mario's wall. I'd felt so stupid. And all those girls that I had gloated over in my dream wedding instead were pointing their fingers at me and laughing behind my back because I'd been foolish enough to think I was enough for a guy like Joe Morelli. It didn't seem to matter to my bruised and battered inner child that Joe had grown up, had told me he loved me and meant it, and that we had the chance for a life together but I'd been too scared to go after it. The adult Joe I loved still had to pay for the scars caused by the boy Joe who had left me behind on a cold concrete floor.

I'd pulled myself together with a lot of tears and a lot of self-loathing, and managed to squeak through college, then married the first hapless jackass who asked me. On the surface, Dickie Orr was perfect for his chosen role: making Stephanie Plum look like she'd made it. He'd been good looking, well-respected, an up and coming lawyer with a solid Burg background. He was everything I was supposed to want. I'd walked down that aisle toward him determined to be a good wife, a spectacular lover, and make our lives just as perfect as the one I'd dreamed up during my first Morelli-induced orgasm. Granted, the church pews hadn't been packed with my high school rivals, but there were enough of them there wearing suitably jealous looks on their faces that it had been pretty gratifying.

Instead of my happily ever after, though, I'd had the rude awakening of finding Dickie screwing skanky Joyce Barnhardt in the middle of my dining room table. When I'd dumped his sorry ass, then and only then had the well-meaning Burg grapevine come alive with the news that Dickie had been screwing a whole raft of women before Joyce ever entered the picture. Suddenly, those jealous faces I'd seen at our wedding looked mocking in my memory. How many of those women had Dickie done while we were married? How many tongues were wagging about "Poor Stephanie" who was such a loser that she hadn't even been able to keep her husband interested till the honeymoon was over?

At least Morelli's writing on the sub shop wall had been complimentary. Dicki's unspoken but obvious preference for skank whores like Joyce over his own wife left me with no doubt about just how far down I ranked. When your husband chose Joyce over you, you had to be pretty bad.

Still, I'd kept my head high, and plowed through Dickie in divorce court much the way I had plowed into Joe Morelli with my father's Buick. I had made sure it hurt him where it counted the most—his wallet, his reputation, and his pride. There was little else I could do. Still, I kept my head held high. I was a modern woman, I was independent, and I didn't need any man to validate my worth, thank you very much. And I kept on doing the responsible, sensible thing. I bought underpants for the plus size and pretended I was working in the fashion business. If I never set the world on fire, at least I was gainfully employed and managed to live a respectable life.

Then that was gone, too. How many times can you look yourself in the mirror and say, "That wasn't my fault," before your inner Jiminy Cricket starts catcalling you? Karma was one thing, but at a certain point you start seeing a pattern whether you want to or not. First Morelli didn't want me, then Loser Dickie didn't want me, then my stupid job at stupid EE Martin didn't want stupid me. Terrific. Three strikes and you're supposed to be out. Only I didn't know how to be out. I didn't know how to quit. My lungs kept working, and my legs kept walking, and while there were times I would have dearly loved to get the hell off the merry-go-round that was my life, I couldn't find the exit sign.

And so I'd stooped to bounty huntering for my beastiality-obsessed poor excuse for a cousin Vinnie. And I'd had to blackmail him to do it. Great. And I'd gotten my very first skip. And Joe Morelli back in my life, after a few initial fits and starts that still gave me the heebie jeebies when I stopped to think about it. I had never asked why Joe had pulled his periodic disappearing acts early in our newly-resurrected relationship, and he'd never offered. But I've always been blessed with an overactive imagination, and I could come up with plenty of possible scenarios, none of them positive.

Then I'd fallen back into Morelli's bed with remarkable ease, and awakened the next morning feeling like my happily ever after was finally about to start. I'd traipsed down the stairs ready to do my very best Martha Stewart meets Linda Lovelace impression. I'd squeeze him fresh orange juice and make him waffles, fold his laundry and pour his coffee, and do it all while wearing a tiny lace garter and a come-hither expression. I would be so perfect that he'd be instantly bowled over by me, just like he had been the night before. Our perfect life would finally start. Everything else had really just been a prelude to this moment, and now all the drama and the angst would have the ultimate payoff.

Only it hadn't worked out that way. Instead of looking at me with longing and dropping to one knee to pledge undying love and devotion, along with the presentation of a spectacular yet tasteful ring, Joe had looked grouchy and wary, and definitely put off by the prospect of blissful cohabitation. I'd recovered more quickly this time, and my momentary lapse of good judgment had rapidly been replaced by good old-fashioned anger, mostly directed at him. Mostly. Part of me, though, was scared spitless that I'd fallen, once again, so easily into the whole happily ever after scenario without ever seeing any of the pitfalls littering the way.

We'd eventually come to an understanding, of sorts. Joe with his probablies, and me with my panic attacks any time the conversation turned to marriage or commitment. No way was I ever going to be led down that primrose path again. I was determined. And still I slogged away at my poor excuse for a job, doing my poor excuse for a bounty hunter thing. And the more messes I got into, the more angry Joe got. And the more angry he got, the more I resisted anything and everything he suggested. He'd had his shot at being the boss of me, and he'd blown it. See if I was going to let him try and tell me what to do now. Of course, I'd nearly gotten myself maimed and killed on a regular basis with my stubborn refusal to listen to any kind of reason from him, and then he'd thrown in the towel. No surprise, really. I'd always expected it, and if I'd helped it along my own self with my stubborn pride and tenacious rebellion, so what? Probably it would have happened sooner or later anyway. Probably. But I'd never really know, because I'd fallen straight into bed with Ranger.

And Ranger had been straight with me that he didn't want a relationship. No strings, no expectations. Just a heady combination of hormones and friendship. And it had been good. More than good, honestly. But when it came right down to it, as I'd often observed to myself, you could take the girl out of the Burg, but you couldn't take the Burg out of the girl. Ultimately, no strings sex didn't hold a lot of appeal for me. I wanted the strings, I wanted the commitment, I wanted the expectations and demands of a real relationship. And Ranger didn't. And I had always known that. In the meantime, of course, his attention had been a real salve to my pride and ego. While I'd convinced myself that the other shoe might someday drop with Morelli, it had been nice to have a "go to" guy waiting in the wings.

The only trouble with that reasoning, of course, was that I'd never actually reasoned it out. I was going with my gut. Granted, my gut has done me some great favors in the past, and made me one lucky bounty hunter. After all these years, I still wasn't particularly good at my job, but I had luck. I had good instincts, at least about finding criminals. Trouble is, I'd come to rely on my instincts instead of my thought processes, and my whole life had turned into one big mess. Instincts are great things, but they have to be balanced by intellect. I'd been doing a piss poor job of doing any thinking and planning while I was following my instincts. Somehow, a part of my brain had gotten the message that Joe wasn't going to drop any shoes on me, that he'd finally grown up and loved me the way I wanted, with no reservations. But the instinctive part of my brain somehow missed the memo, and was still operating on the idea that Joe would leave me, and I didn't want to be left an embarrassed, heartbroken, laughingstock. So I'd followed my hormones and played around with Ranger, telling myself when I bothered to think about it that since we had only had actual sex when Joe and I had broken up, nothing else counted.

Trouble is, I wasn't a kid any more. And neither were Joe or Ranger. And in real adult life, everything counts. Everything. And it turns out, the only person I'd been deluding all this time was me. So here I sat, in my poor excuse for an apartment with its just-out-of-college bohemian mismatch and mishmash of furniture, on a leave of absence from a job I have a love-hate relationship with at best, and an empty bed mocking me from the other room. And, oh yeah, an empty heart. Worst of all, I didn't know if I had to strength to pull myself up by my bootstraps and start over still one more time. I had already done that so many times, the very idea of starting over scared me to death.

But once again, into the fray. Once again, I couldn't find my exit sign. So I'd ride this merry-go-round till the bitter end. I might go down, but I wouldn't go down without a fight. Resolutely, I switched on my cell phone, and hit the speed dial.

"Hey, it's me." I was a little hesitant. I'd been out of commission for awhile, and wasn't too sure of my reception. "Any chance we could get together for a couple of hours? I really need to talk to you." My eyes teared up at the ready agreement that came right back at me. In for a penny, in for a pound. I'd have to face my ghosts sometime. "How about Pino's in an hour?" I closed the phone and meandered over to the bathroom, flipping the light switch and staring hard into the mirror. I'd heard once that we really only see people the first time we meet them. After that, our brains fill in the details and we just see the memory we have of those people. I wondered if it was possible for that to happen with yourself? How many times had I looked into this mirror, ostensibly checking the details of my appearance, and only seen what I remembered, the memory of who Stephanie used to be? It wasn't about the mirror, of course, and it reflected the usual, expected me, hair a little longer than usual since I was overdue for a cut, skin a little more pale, faint blue shadows under my eyes. Not bad, I thought, but the emotional toll of the past few weeks was definitely there. As I applied my makeup and fixed my hair with fingers that were a little less deft than usual, I determined to make an effort to look at the real Stephanie, and monitor what she was doing and the choices she was making. I was done with living my life on autopilot. I was going to own my life and be more conscious of my choices. I finally stood back and surveyed the final results of my slightly out of practice efforts. I'd definitely looked better, but I shouldn't scare off small children either. I gave myself a small nod. Good enough for a Friday night at Pino's. Those bootstraps were none too comfortable, but they'd serve once again to pull me up. I had my armor of makeup firmly in place, if a little smudged around the edges. I was through cowering in my apartment, hiding. It might have taken me awhile to regroup this time, but regroup I would, and I'd come out better for it.

In the meantime, I was actually hungry for the first time in days. No more scavenging the kitchen shelves for whatever would keep me alive. I'd even briefly considered going the Ranger route of health food, complete with tofu and pine nuts and sprouts, then changed my mind. The point of all this self-examination was to figure out who and what I wanted, not turn myself into what I thought someone else wanted. And what I wanted right now, tonight, was the comfort and familiarity of Pino's, situated in the heart of the Burg. Sure, tongues would wag, and some might even point and laugh at hapless Stephanie once again falling flat on her proverbial ass in front of the world. The point it is, it was my ass and my world and I was going to own it.

I pulled into the first parking space I saw, took a deep, bracing breath, and sauntered through the old familiar door with as much aplomb as I could muster. My eyes flicked quickly over the crowded tables. Granted, a few faces gawked, and a few more looked less than friendly, but by and large people were too busy with their own little lives to pay much attention to me. Probably it had always been like that and I'd been mired too deep in my own issues to realize it. I gave an intentionally breezy smile to the gawkers, ignored the unfriendly glances, and picked my way slowly through the crowd to a small table in the back. I'd spotted the familiar leather coat as soon as I'd hit the door.

"Hey," I said, hand on the shoulder, intending to slide around to the other side of the booth.


	3. Chapter 3

I pulled into the first parking space I saw, took a deep, bracing breath, and sauntered through the old familiar door with as much aplomb as I could muster. My eyes flicked quickly over the crowded tables. Granted, a few faces gawked, and a few more looked less than friendly, but by and large people were too busy with their own little lives to pay much attention to me. Probably it had always been like that and I'd been mired too deep in my own issues to realize it. I gave an intentionally breezy smile to the gawkers, ignored the unfriendly glances, and picked my way slowly through the crowd to a small table in the back. I'd spotted the familiar leather coat as soon as I'd hit the door.

"Hey," I said, hand on the shoulder, intending to slide around to the other side of the booth.

Before I knew what hit me, I found myself enveloped in a tight hug, surrounded by soft hair and the unmistakable scent of gardenias. Mary Lou had worn White Shoulders as long as I could remember, and I closed my eyes and drank in her unwavering support. Only a best friend would have recognized the support, of course, because her mouth was moving at ninety miles an hour. I could only catch small snatches of her berating me over the usual Friday night din in Pinos. Something about not knowing if I was alive or dead, and what did I think I was doing pulling a disappearing act on my best friend, and a whole lot of other things that I just let wash over me. Mary Lou and her gardenia perfume were as familiar to me as my own face in the mirror had been, and I clung to the strength of her concern for me. The rest of the world might point and laugh, or even look at me like I was dirt the way Tony Morelli had, but Mary Lou would always have my back.

We were drawing quite a bit of attention, and I laughed through tears at the fierce way MaryLou stared down the gawkers. Most had retreated into anonymity at her first glare. Even the most hardcore gossipmongers couldn't stand up to MaryLou's narrow-eyed "Mind your business." The combination of mom voice with the residual Jersey girl behind it was pretty convincing. "So why didn't you call me?" she demanded once things had settled back down.

"I did," I answered. She canted her head to the side and gave me a patented look. We'd been friends for so many years that I didn't have any trouble reading her skepticism, even though she didn't say a word. "I did, really. I had a lot of thinking to do. So much thinking my head hurts, if you want to know the truth of it. And when I got done, I picked up the phone and called you. Swear to God."

She looked slightly mollified, but worry was still written all over her face. "I would have come over," she said, still not ready to completely forgive me for disappearing for the past two weeks. I knew the Burg, and I knew the rumor mill had likely been grinding overtime, especially when fed such a juicy and public breakup.

I reached over and laid my hand on top of hers. "I know you would," I answered. "But this was something I had to work through by myself."

She sat back and folded her hands in front of her, waiting for me to spill. Somehow, the thought of spilling my guts to Mary Lou had a lot more appeal than than the daunting thought it had been with my mother. I guess old habits die hard. MaryLou had been my sounding board since we were in pigtails, and that wasn't likely to change. She might chew my ass for cutting her out of my life when I was hurting, but she took her role as best friend seriously. Unfortunately, there was just no easy place to start. What the hell. We'd start at the heart of the matter and work our way around to everything else. "So you heard about me and Joe," I finally choked out.

"I heard," she answered, noncommittally.

Unspoken was her question of why I hadn't called her to talk about it before now. Why she'd had to hear about it third hand when she was my best friend. She didn't make any accusations, but I felt them, all the same. Friendships and relationships all required an investment of time and effort, and had their own expectations and demands attached, depending on the depth of the relationship. I'd let MaryLou down by not coming to her earlier, I realized. She would never demand an apology from me, but it was my place to offer if not an apology, at least an explanation. MaryLou wasn't some casual friend, and she'd deserved more consideration than to be left hanging for more than two weeks.

"I was really torn up about it," I said, "And I needed to do some thinking." She nodded, but still looked wary. I drew in a deep breath. "I needed to figure out some things about my life, and I couldn't lean on anybody else. It was important that I do it on my own. Do you understand?"

Her eyes teared up. "Of course." I knew she'd understand. She'd always understand, even when she really didn't, because that was what best friends did. "But you could have called and let me know you were okay."

I rolled my eyes. "I only called my mother because she showed up at my apartment in the middle of the night and upset all the neighbors with her banging on the door," I explained.

"Yeah, I know," said MaryLou. "She told me." She waited for a beat. "Still, it would have been nice to hear it from you."

I nodded. "I just couldn't talk to anybody about it MaryLou. Not then."

She nodded in agreement, my tacit apology accepted. "So what about now?"

"Now?" I answered. "Now I get on with the rest of my life. Joe and I," my voice broke, and I cleared my throat and made myself talk through it. I'd thought it a thousand times, but I'd never said it out loud before. "Joe and I are finished. I really hurt him, MaryLou, and he's not talking to me. I don't think I'll ever see him again." Suddenly, the sense of loss was overwhelming. It was almost like if I didn't say it out loud, it might not happen. But now that I had actually said the words to MaryLou, they rang with a finality that I couldn't hide from. My heart clenched as I recognized the truth of what I'd said. A thousand images of Joe raced through my mind. Laughing, smiling, teasing, sleeping, his face intent and focused as his body moved over mine. But ultimately, the face that haunted me was the face I'd seen right before I walked out his front door. Carefully blank, giving away no emotion, except his eyes. His beautiful, expressive, eyes had just looked bleached out and dead. And I had done it. I swallowed hard and looked away, willing the tears standing in my eyes to go back to where they came from.

"What about Ranger?" MaryLou asked quietly.

I shook my head. "There was never anything there to build a relationship on," I explained, not willing to share our personal interlude, even with MaryLou. Ranger was a solitary, private man, with more than his own share of demons chasing him, but his secrets were not mine to share. The end result was the same, but those intimate details he'd gifted me when I was at my lowest point would remain just between the two of us. And whatever else might happen or not happen between the two of us in the future, those confidences had been a gift of enormous proportion. Ultimately, Ranger and I wanted different things out of life. He had been right all along. I would always dream of a semi-conventional life with my own unconventional twists, while those fetters would always make him unhappy. He loved me yes, and I loved him. But not enough for either of us to be comfortable in each other's lives for the long-term in a go-the-distance kind of way. He was allergic to long-term, and long-term was an undeniable need within me. My only real regret was that I hadn't listened more carefully to what he told me years ago. I could have spared all of us, including me, but especially Joe, a lot of heartache.

"So it's just me," I said, trying to put on a brave face and probably failing miserably. Still, I had to practice. "And I'm thinking about making some changes."

"What kind of changes?" asked MaryLou, right on cue.

"I'm thinking about taking out a small business loan. Opening my own business." I knew I was taking a chance. Every other person I knew might well laugh in my face at the idea of me running my own show.

"I think that's terrific," she said, without missing a single beat. "What kind of business, and what can I do to help?"

I smiled through sudden tears. That was my MaryLou. "Investigating. I think I'd make a good private investigator." I finally confided. "I'd start out small, of course, but I really think I could make a go of it. I'm good at finding things out—finding people," I elaborated, warming to my subject. "And I bet I could do some contract work for Vinnie, or even for Rangeman. I haven't talked to either of them about it yet, because I'm still in the planning stages. So what do you think?"

"I think you'll be great at it, Steph! You're a natural! That's so exciting, you starting your own business. I definitely think you should do it." I couldn't tell if MaryLou was really all that enthused about my plan, or if she was just glad to see me back among the living and offering her unstinting support as always. And for tonight, it didn't really matter. I hadn't needed someone to critique my business plan, haphazard though it still was, I'd needed my friend to be my cheerleader, and as usual, MaryLou had come through in spades.

We talked until the crowd thinned, which was a long time on a Friday night, and until MaryLou's cell phone became too insistent. She looked at me apologetically after the fourth interruption in the past ten minutes. "I'm really sorry, Steph," she said with real regret. "But I'm going to have to go."

I shook my head in understanding. "Not a problem. I know you have kids, MaryLou. I'm just glad you were able to come out and meet me tonight on such short notice."

"Always," she said, and hugged me tight once more as she gathered her purse and coat and headed for the door.

My own departure was a little more drawn out. Unlike MaryLou, I didn't have a husband and kids waiting at home for me. I'd always secretly reveled in that, especially when her kids were on less than stellar behavior. But tonight, it just felt lonely. Nobody would be calling my cell phone, anxiously waiting for me to get home. Nobody was waiting for me to make everything right with their world, and if Mikey's last shrill diatribe was to be believed, only MaryLou had that capacity. I didn't envy MaryLou her Mikey, of course, but in the back of my head there had dwelt a little dark haired boy or girl whose eyes lit up when I came into the room, someone who was convinced I had hung the moon and loved me with purity and simplicity. That ephemeral someday would never come, and I quietly shut the door on that proverbial child that would never be, more than a little wistful. A little girl with Joe's dark eyes and my mother's delicate hands, or a little boy grinning up at me with my own blue eyes dancing with Joe's devilment. Gone, in a puff of smoke, or in my case, a surge of errant hormones. I touched my suddenly empty belly with a sense of loss. I'd never feel Joe's child growing inside me, yet another loss to chalk up to Hurricane Stephanie. How could you miss something that never was? But somehow, I did.

It was late when I finally walked into the elevator, Mrs. Bestler had gone to bed long since. I pushed the button and idly leaned against the back wall. I was exhausted, but I had made it through the first night of the rest of my life. It hadn't been perfect, but it had been real. And MaryLou had been there for me just like she always had. In a cold and suddenly bereft world, that stability was a beacon of surcease, and I held onto it for all I was worth. The doors slid open as I fished out my door key from the bottom of my handbag. Not looking where I was walking, I tripped, then stumbled and fell, sprawling in a disorganized heap across Joe Morelli's outstretched legs.

His eyes were closed, and he had slouched down so his head was resting just below my doorknob. I hadn't seen him since Black Thursday, and took a moment to just drink in the sight of him. The long denim encased legs hadn't changed, and the chest underneath the thermal Henley didn't look any different. His hands were resting on his thighs, fingers long and oddly elegant for a man who was such a primitive male. Dark stubble gave his face a more swarthy look than when I'd seen him last, and he still had disgustingly long eyelashes that rested against chiseled cheekbones. Faint lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes, and a small frown seemed to have taken up permanent residence between the sweep of his eyebrows. Even in sleep, he looked tired, more worn around the edges as if life hadn't been kind lately. I sighed, and his eyes fluttered open, his cop's instinct kicking in at even the small sound I'd made. "Hey," I said, unable to think of anything else.

Joe's mouth parted in a lopsided grin that didn't reach his eyes. His eyes remained shuttered, blank. As if all the life had been drained out of him, leaving behind just a shell. If the eyes were the windows to the soul, Joe's eyes were boarded up he'd moved and left no forwarding address. "How ya doin'?" He pronounced his words carefully, overly enunciating each syllable, but deliberately casual in his delivery, like something he would have said to a stranger passing him on the street. I flinched.

"Why are you here, Joe?"

I watched him struggle to his feet, more than a little unsteady, with the overly exaggerated careful movements of a man who was hopelessly drunk and trying desperately to hide it. "I needed a favor," he finally said, holding onto the doorknob for dear life.

I noticed the door across the hall creep open, and made quick work of stepping around a still-unsteady Joe to unlock my door. If this was going to be a showdown, I wanted it private. I'd already given plenty of fodder to the gossip mills at the sub shop, and I wasn't eager for a repeat. "You still have a key," I snapped, glaring at my neighbor until I heard the door snick shut. "You could have waited inside."

"No, I couldn't," said Joe. I looked at him, but he just shook his head. "I couldn't," he repeated.

I lowered my eyes, and looked anywhere but at him. I couldn't stand to see the pain seeping out around the edges of those carefully concealing shutters, especially knowing I had put it there.

"I thought he would be here," he said, following me into the livingroom. I dumped my bag and hung my jacket up on the coat rack.

"No," I answered. I wasn't going to give a long, involved explanation. I didn't need to parade my own stupidity around any more than necessary. I'd had a good thing going with Joe and blown it because I couldn't or wouldn't control my hormones with Ranger. The hormonal thing with Ranger had no substance or staying power, so here I was on a Friday night, dateless and alone, the high point of my week a quick and greasy pizza with my childhood friend. My guess was that Joe hadn't been drinking alone, and I didn't want to seem like any more of a loser than I already felt. Joe might smell of beer, but underneath the smell of hops and stale cigarette smoke from the bar was the unmistakable scent of a woman's perfume. Expensive, I thought. Exotic. Alluring. I shut my eyes against the onslaught of unwelcome images. Joe with his arms around someone else, Joe dancing with some woman, nuzzling her neck the way he used to mine, making her laugh up into those beautiful brown eyes. I swallowed down the gorge rising in the back of my throat and took a deep and hopefully calming breath. No such luck, the smell of that damn perfume filled my nostrils. Was this what Joe had felt when I'd come home reeking of Bulgari? Suddenly, I never wanted to smell that fragrance again.

"Damn," Joe muttered, and collapsed in a heap on the sofa.

I shook my head. "Why would you want to see Ranger, Joe?" I was tired, bone-tired, and just wanted to crawl into bed and stay there for a week or three. I just wanted to not hurt for a little while.

"Well, here's the thing," he sat forward unsteadily and braced his elbows on his knees, looking at me earnestly. "I went out to this bar tonight." Tell me something I didn't know. "And I wanted to get laid." I closed my eyes again. Too much information, Joe. "But I was looking at this woman, and she was beautiful." That last word drug out so long, I was ready to smack him. "Pretty, long hair, big tits, and she smelled so good." Yeah, I bet she did. Again, my stomach did a barrel roll. Probably I would have to fumigate my apartment to get rid of that smell. "And I had my arms around her, and I looked into her face." I could picture it. The picture wasn't pretty, but I'd given up any right I had to object, so I listened quietly, and hoped like hell he'd get to the end of whatever he wanted to say and just leave. I didn't know how much more I could take.

"And all I could see was you."

What? I looked up at him to make sure I'd heard him correctly.

"Yeah," he answered.

"So then I thought if I came over here, and I saw you with him, that maybe I would see that instead, you know? If I could see you with him, then that would be the image of you I'd have instead of your face whenever I looked at another woman." Joe ruminated for a minute, then shot to his feet, which was probably a mistake, given that he practically landed on his ass. He staggered over to the bedroom and opened the door, peering around the doorframe to look inside. "So he's really not here? Damn. I was really hoping this would work." He turned to face me, and the shutters had dropped from his eyes, leaving only the broken pieces behind. "Because I really don't want to love you any more."

"Joe," I said, and moved toward him. But he turned and faced the bedroom again before I could cross the room.

"You fucked him in this bed, didn't you?" That stopped me in my tracks. I didn't know how to answer that. And the question by itself sliced through me like a knife. Joe looked over his shoulder at me, and made a dismissive gesture, like the answer didn't matter. Probably it didn't. Probably he already knew the answer and wished he'd never asked. Probably wouldn't have if he hadn't been drunk. "You know what's funny?"

"What's that?" I asked, dutifully, grateful to have a question I could actually answer without incriminating myself.

Joe turned back toward my bedroom, his eyes zeroed in on my bed. On my damnable bed. "I burned my bed."

"What?"

"Yup. Took it out in the back yard and set it on fire," he elaborated. "Old Lady Rossi called the fire department, of course, and then they called the cops." Shit, how much trouble was Joe in? "Carl and Big Dog got the call. I was ready to torch the house by then, but they said I couldn't. Said they could just give me a ticket for illegal burning since it was just the bed, but if I did the house it was arson and that's a felony. Can you believe that shit? A man can't even burn down his own house. Fuckers." I didn't know if he was referring to the cops or the legislators that made arson a felony or just anyone and everyone in general. "So they sat down with me in the backyard and we all had a beer while the bed burned." He looked over at me conspirationally. "Don't tell anybody about them having beers while they were on duty, okay? I don't want to get them in trouble. Especially since they got me out of the whole arson thing."

"Okay, Joe," I choked out.

"Yeah, you were always good at keeping secrets," he mocked. "The thing is, you're in every fucking corner of my house, Stephanie. You were the only woman who ever slept there. I didn't know how else to get you out. I've been sleeping on Mooch's sofa, for Christ's sake. I'm thirty-four years old, and sleeping on my cousin's sofa. That's no kind of life, Stephanie. So tonight, I figured I'd go hook up with somebody, go back to her place, you know? At least you wouldn't be there. Except you were." He sighed wearily, and I reached out my hand to touch his arm. He flinched away from me.

"So he's really not here?" I shook my head, too choked up to speak. "Well, that's too bad for me, isn't it." He thought for a couple of minutes longer, then leveled a long gaze straight at me. "Can you at least tell me why? Why wasn't I enough, Stephanie? Was it something I did? Something I didn't do? I've been trying to wrap my head around this, and I really just don't get it." He sounded so lost, so broken. I just shook my head mutely.

"I loved you," he said simply. "But that wasn't enough. I always thought that when you loved somebody, it was with your whole heart. At least it was for me. I waited a long time, you know." I did know, and suddenly the tears that had been struggling to the surface broke free. "I waited, and you scared the shit out of me so many times, because I'd never felt anything like that before. I fought it, and I tried not to love you, but I just did." He looked at me beseechingly. "I just _did_, and I thought that was enough. Where did I fuck up?"

"It wasn't about you, Joe. It was about me, okay?"

He shook his head. "No. No way. I wasn't enough for you, and I need to know why? Just be straight with me Stephanie. You owe me that much."

"I am being straight with you Joe." I took a deep breath and fought down my tears to continue. "You want to know where you fucked up? You fucked up when you took my virginity and never looked back, and you fucked up that first morning in your house when you didn't want forever with me. But that's it."

His head was still shaking, but more slowly, out of confusion instead of denial. "I apologized for when we were kids, Steph—" I held up my hand to stop him.

"I know you did, Joe, and it's okay."

"And I admit you scared the hell out of me that morning. You walked into that kitchen, and I knew in that minute that I wanted to see you there every damn morning for the rest of my life, and I freaked. I'm sorry that it hurt you, Steph, I really am. I wish you would have said something, I really do. I would have made it up to you."

"Joe, you're not listening to me. It wasn't about _you_, it was about _me_." He still looked confused, but at least he was listening to me. "Yeah, you broke my heart when I was sixteen. I thought it was forever when it was really a one-night stand. I was young and naïve, and I didn't understand." He started to interrupt me, but I held out my hand again to stop him. "Please, Joe, just let me finish, okay?" He nodded, and I geared myself up for the rest of it. "I'll be honest with you. It fucked me up. It fucked me up to the point that I married Dickie the wonder-weenie just to prove I had what it took to land a decent guy. Only he wasn't decent. He nailed half the women in the Burg, including that skank whore Joyce. And if I wasn't good enough to hold onto Joe Morelli, well, here was Dickie willing to publicly humiliate me by preferring that bitch to his own wife. You have any idea of how stupid I felt? How humiliated? Bad enough that he'd pick someone else over me, but a total loser like Joyce Barnhardt? I lost to Joyce Fucking Barnhardt? And then I sleep with you, and I fell right back into the same stupid trap. The same trap I'd fallen into with Dickie. You wanna talk about being scared? It scared the shit out of me how fast I went down. I trip down the stairs ready to make you breakfast, and wash your socks, and have your babies, and you looked at me like you wished I was anywhere but there. One more time, Stupid Stephanie mistakes a one night stand for forever."

"I never meant for you to feel like that," Joe admitted.

"I know that, Joe. I do. But I still felt like that. And the idea that I'd fallen right back into that old trap scared me so bad that the very idea of any relationship at all scared me. I felt like if I let myself love someone, I'd be right back there, ready to be taken advantage of, ready to be humiliated, ready to be stupid. I just couldn't do it."

Joe still looked confused, but he nodded. Maybe at least part of him was getting it. I don't know. Maybe he was so far gone that he wouldn't remember any of it tomorrow anyway.

"So when Ranger started paying attention to me, it was easy." I shrugged. "I'm not proud of it, but I have to admit it did my battered ego a lot of good to have two hot men chasing after me. Like I was saying, 'Look at me—I do too matter.'" I shook my head. "It's not your fault, Joe, not really. It just _is_. I dunno. All I know is I'm sorry I hurt you."

"Was it ever real?" Joe asked. I looked at him and blinked, not sure what he was asking. "Between us. Was it ever real? Did you ever feel for me what I felt for you? You were the only woman who ever made me feel like I could maybe break out of the Morelli mold. Maybe I didn't have to be just like my old man. I started thinking that maybe I could be a good husband. Maybe I could be a real father, not some asshole who knocked his kids around and chased skirts. I started believing the fairy tale. You wanna talk about stupid? I feel stupid."

"Don't feel stupid, Joe. If anyone's stupid, it was me, for not realizing what we had until it was too late. For not cherishing it, nurturing it like the rare gift it was. Was it real? It was the realest I ever felt, Joe. Swear to God."

Joe walked over and sat down tiredly on the edge of my bed. "I don't want to love you any more, Stephanie."

I cringed. "You said that already."

He nodded. He tilted then, and crashed like a tower, his head on my pillow. "I mean it, though. I really don't want to."

"I know, Joe." I slipped his shoes off and maneuvered his feet up onto the bed.

"I really do love you though." Tears pricked my eyes, and I pulled the blankets over him.

"I really do love you too, Joe." I ran my hand over his hair, unable to stop myself.

"But I'm going to figure out how to stop," he said earnestly, his eyes closing.

"Good luck with that, Morelli." He smiled in his sleep.

Hours later, I crawled into the other side of the bed and wrapped myself around him. I knew it would be for the last time. I knew in the morning, he would be gone, but I was an addict. I needed one last fix. I wanted one last memory of a night in Joe's arms to last me, so like a fool I took it. When he moved against me in his sleep, I didn't protest, just savored the feel of him moving on top of me, inside of me one last time. His eyes never opened, and mine never closed, I was so determined to imprint his face on my synapses one final time. And in the morning, when I woke to the bright sun coming in my bedroom window, I knew before I turned that the bed beside me was empty. He'd left me a Butterscotch Krimpet on the pillow, and a note telling me he was going to Newark, and wouldn't be back.


	4. Chapter 4

My eyes glazed over as I read the brightly colored posters plastered all over the office walls for what had to be the twenty-third time. The outdated magazines in the waiting room didn't hold my interest, which was no big surprise considering I had absolutely zero attention span these days. I fidgeted around, trying to find a comfortable position in the hard plastic molded chair and wound up facing Cathy Morelli Bacchino again. Obviously, I had developed a terminal case of "Invisible to Morellis Syndrome", and she dutifully avoided meeting my eyes, and busied herself with her two youngest. She made sure their attention was focused anywhere but on me. On the one hand, it hurt because I'd watched those kids grow up during the time I'd been with Joe. On the other hand, I was definitely persona non grata after Black Thursday and Joe's subsequent defection to Newark. A part of me felt like walking straight up to her and informing her that she couldn't possibly hate me any more than I hated myself, but I frankly just didn't have the energy. I'd been paddling through molasses for months, now, and it took everything I had in me just to focus on getting my investigations business off the ground. I was holding onto my apartment by a shoestring, and if my parents fed me more often than I ate at home, at least they weren't complaining about it. I was just so damn tired of it all. When I was awake, all I wanted to do was sleep and escape the miasma that had taken over my life.

A few weeks ago, after a particularly blistering conversation with MaryLou, I finally had to face the fact that me and my bootstraps just might have to part company. I'd pulled myself up by them more times than I could count: after losing my virginity and what was left of my pride on the bakery floor, after Dickie had publicly humiliated me by screwing Joyce Barnhardt and anything else he could slide his salami into, after losing my job, after having cars blow up around me, rolling in garbage, having attempts made on my life, and the other attendant things that had gone wrong in all of my thirty-two years. At long last, those trusty bootstraps had failed me this time. And I hated the idea that I might need pharmaceutical help to get over the debilitating lethargy that had overtaken me for the past five and a half months. Okay, five months and seventeen days, but at least I'd given up counting the hours and minutes since I had awakened alone with my Butterscotch Krimpet.

The magazine quiz that MaryLou had thrust under my nose had been pretty clear. According to the powers that be in the publishing world, I was at high risk for clinical depression and I needed to consult my physician. MaryLou had refused to leave until she'd heard me actually make the appointment, and it just seemed like too much effort to cancel it afterward. She'd shown up on my doorstep on the stroke of two and hauled me down to Dr. Benardi's office with promises to return after Mikey's soccer game. I would have been humiliated except I couldn't work up the energy to do much more than just sit here and wait for my name to be called, and ignore the daggers that Joe's sister flung my direction when she thought I wasn't looking. At this point, I basically just wanted to get in and get out with a prescription for something that would make me feel normal again, if that were even a remote possibility. I snorted in response to my own errant thoughts, and drew Cathy's attention. Great. Now she could go back and tell Clan Morelli that I was laughing at myself in the doctor's office today.

The receptionist finally called my name, and I escaped to the inner sanctum of the exam rooms with a palpable feeling of relief. I'd always gotten along with Cathy well enough. We were never close, but our paths inevitably crossed in the Burg and at Morelli family get-togethers. She was smart and funny, with her own fair share of the Morelli charm. Warmer and more approachable than her mother, Angie, could ever be, I'd gravitated toward Cathy and her laid-back style. We may not have been friends, but I didn't like to think of us as enemies. Still, I had been the scarlet woman who drove her baby brother away, and I could really expect no less. It still hurt, though.

The doctor's perky new assistant who couldn't have been much more than a teenager put me through my paces. No temperature, heart rate and respiration fine, blood pressure completely normal. My height was unchanged, big surprise. I'd hit 5'7" the year I turned fourteen, and hadn't wavered so much as a fraction of an inch since then. Why did they ask the same stupid questions over and over again? Okay, I was still down three pounds. I'd originally dropped ten after Joe had left, but I'd put seven back on again. Not bad, all things considered. She banged on my knees with her little rubber mallet, and I had to stifle a giggle when she earnestly recorded that I still had reflexes in my legs. God, had I ever been that young? Today I felt ancient, as if the weight of the world were pressing down on me.

Date of my last menstrual period. Jeez, I don't know. It's been really irregular for the past six months or so, which is part of the reason I decided to go ahead and come in today, even aside from MaryLou's insistence. A few weeks ago when I'd rolled over onto my stomach to sleep, I'd discovered a lump. Not in my breast, but just above my pubic bone. Probably it was a fibroid or something, but my mind still skittered around the "C" word. What if I had ovarian cancer or something like that? It might even just be gas or something totally benign, but it didn't go away when I ignored it, and I was getting a little bit scared.

Miss Perky sent me down to the lab for blood and urine samples as part of today's grand and glorious workup, then told me the doctor would be in to see me shortly. Shortly, huh. I decided Miss Perky had a wicked sense of humor when I was still staring at the beige walls of the exam room at five o'clock that afternoon. Miss Perky had turned into a jack in the box, popping her head in the door every twenty minutes or so to reassure me that the doctor was dealing with an emergency, but would be in to see me as soon as he could. I'd heard that a time or two before.

Finally Dr. Benardi loped in a few minutes past five o'clock. He had far too much energy for that late in the day, and I scowled at him. "Sorry about that," he said breezily, in the tone doctors reserve for mere mortals. I gritted my teeth and vowed to get my precious piece of paper that would fix me up with my magic pills then get the hell out of there until time for my next annual. Ignoring my scowl, the doctor started blithely flipping through my chart. Probably didn't help that I'd gone to school with his baby sister, so taking me seriously had never been high on his list. Still, I felt slightly less squishy about Rosie Benardi's big brother seeing me naked that old Dr. Cecchini. Doc Cecchini had only had one eyebrow, and it was a monster. He had jowls that threatened to take over his shoulders and his big rheumy eyes had always seemed to see way too much when he was giving me my annual. "Let's see here. Looks like it's been more than a year since your last Pap," Dr. Benardi mused. Shit and double shit. I hated those damn stirrups, and the idea of a man putting his hand in my hoo-hah without buying me dinner first had always made me nervous. It's not like the old hoo-hah was seeing any action these days anyway. What was to check? Well, except for that lump thing.

"Okay," I said meekly, when I really meant "Keep your hands off my hoo-hah." I laid back and tried to think of England. It was either that or think of the last guy who had visited my hoo-hah, however briefly. I knew the tears would immediately come if I thought of Joe, so I blinked them back resolutely and silently hummed Hail Britannia to myself.

"When was your last menstrual period?" he asked, breaking right into the middle of the third chorus and shooting my concentration all to hell. What was he, mining for silver up there or something?

"I've been pretty irregular," I grunted as he hit something that was definitely NOT my G-spot. "But I've had some pretty consistent spotting over the past six months." Geez, give it a rest and go poke something else, wouldya please? His fingers finally slid out of me, and I resisted the sudden urge to ask for a cigarette and concentrated on giving the flecks in the wallpaper next to the exam bed a really close examination.

"Well, your uterus is significantly enlarged," he said. "Is there a possibility you could be pregnant?"

"No," I answered. I really didn't want to elaborate. I knew the theory behind doctor patient confidentiality, but John Benardi was also Rosie's big brother, and a long-time resident of the Burg. No sense taking any chances. Burg gossip knew no bounds.

"No lab results back yet," he muttered under his breath, shuffling still more papers. He walked over to the wall-mounted telephone and punched in a few numbers. I assumed there was no answer, because he grunted noncommittally before he hung up. "But there's something definitely going on in there. You're sure there's no chance you could be pregnant?" This time I met his gaze coolly and gave him what he was looking for.

"I haven't had sex in five months and seventeen days. You think I'm that far pregnant?" I asked baldly. Two could play this game.

He broke eye contact first, and frantically flipped through my chart. Gathering his scattered calm, he met my eyes once more. "Your uterus isn't measuring in that range, no. My ultrasound technician is gone for the day, but I'm concerned about this. I think we really need to take a look."

Loved that royal we that doctors had acquired over the years. "Can it wait?" I'd already been here more than three hours, and all I really wanted was to go home, eat a peanutbutter sandwich, and fall into bed for a few years.

"I don't think it's a good idea."

I sighed. "Look, I'm really here because I'm concerned about depression."

He nodded sagely and said, "I understand that, but we need to make sure we rule out any physical issues as well." There was that damn 'we' again. I was really starting to get irritated. "Additionally, we need to positively rule out pregnancy before prescribing any anti-depressants. Most drugs in that category are not safe for the fetus."

"But it could be just a fibroid or something, though, right?" I asked.

His face turned into a smooth blank mask. "That's certainly a possibility." Oh, John had done well at doctor school. He wasn't going to give anything away. He was hedging his bets and not committing himself to anything. So I had a choice here. I could play along and try to get everything knocked out today, or I could come back and start over. Or find another doctor and start over. Great. More strange hands in my hoo-hah. No thank you. Since Dr. John Benardi and I were already practically acquainted in the biblical sense, I sure didn't want to have to go through a repeat. Fine. I nodded my head in acquiescence.

"Good. If you'll just keep your gown on and follow me, we'll see what we can find out." What, did he think I was going to strip off the gown and make a run for it? I have a better idea, John. How about YOU wear the gown with your butt hanging out in the breeze and I'll wear the white coat? But I said nothing and followed him out the door and down the hall, clutching the washed out cotton gown shut over my behind, hoping the office was deserted and nobody would see me.

More stirrups, more crackling paper covers. At least this time nothing was prodding my hoo-hah, which was a small mercy. I had cold goo smeared all over from my belly button to points south, and Dr. Benardi apologized profusely for the goo not being warm. Like having a slimy slug trail across your gut would somehow be more aesthetically pleasing if it was warm instead of cold. Yeah. He moved the transducer over my belly, then sat back and blinked at the screen like an owl. "What?" I asked. What had he found? Aliens? Watermelons? A huge wad of chewing gum? I had always known those stories about swallowing watermelon seeds and chewing gum had to have some basis in fact. And now here I was thirty-two years old with a watermelon plant growing out of a great wad of chewing gum or something. I started to panic, still refusing to think about the "C" word.

Without saying a word, he reached over and twisted a dial, filling the room with a rhythmic pocking sound. "What's that?" I asked, although in my heart of hearts I knew. Who knew you could feel euphoria and dread, all at once? My stomach was sinking to my toes and fluttering up behind my heart, both at the same time.

"I need to take some measurements, and you're definitely small for your dates, but that's the fetal heartbeat. You're sure about the dates?" he asked again.

I nodded slowly. The last time. I knew it to the minute, if he really wanted to know. He started talking, then, as he clicked away, taking measurements and flipping through charts for comparison. I let my mind drift. Fetus. He kept saying fetus. Fetus, not baby. Not a baby yet, then.

Ah, of course.

I hadn't exactly been trying to get pregnant, and doctor school had obviously told him that fetus was somehow less personal than baby, at least until you knew whether or not the mother was going to have an abortion. I don't know which term made me cringe more, mother or abortion. I'd never really stopped to think about myself as a mother. I'd thought about kids someday maybe, in the abstract, but never in the here and now. So could I picture myself as a mother? My mind just wasn't going there.

Okay.

The other alternative was picturing myself having an abortion. Could I do that? No way was I prepared to raise a baby alone, and I was just starting my own business, barely able to keep a roof over my own head let alone someone else's. My doubt must have shown in my face, because Dr. Benardi started talking to me again.

"I understand that this has been quite a shock to you," he started. I nodded, dumbly. Shock wasn't the word for it. Take it up about seven exponents and you might get in the ballpark. "And of course, you have options. Not as many as you would have had you known sooner, of course, and I'm not sure what the requirements are since I don't do the er ah procedure. But I can refer you to someone…" his words trailed off into a barely discernible murmur and all I could hear was the insistent pock, pock, pock, echoing off the walls of the room.

"…some difficulty because of the placement of the placenta. The placenta has grown over the cervix and is partially abrupted, which has been what caused both your spotting and the fetal intrauterine growth retardation." The metronome cadence of the pocking seemed to fade into the background as I listened to him.

"Wait. Are you telling me that there's something wrong with my baby?" Instinctively, my hand traveled down my belly and encountered a handful of sticky goo. I didn't care. I held onto that hard little mound for all I was worth. Anything coming after my baby would have to go through me first. I listened hard for that reassuring pock from the machine, the heart so strong, so consistent, so wanting to keep beating. Whatever I had to do to make that happen, I would do.

"As I said, Stephanie, your placenta is partially abrupted. That means the fetus isn't getting an adequate oxygen or nutrition supply to sustain growth. If the placenta completely pulls away from the uterus, the fetus will be compromised, and you could hemorrhage before we could intervene medically."

"Define compromised," I spat. "And it's not a fetus, it's a baby."

He inclined his head in agreement. "I can't be sure. At the very least, your baby is not growing the way she should. She's very small." Seeing my panic, he continued, "On the plus side, her heartbeat is strong and there don't seem to be any physical anomalies that I can detect."

"It's a girl?" I asked, focusing on the only positive thing I could find in that last part.

He nodded and smiled a very small smile.

I took a deep breath. "So what do I have to do?" I asked.

He sighed. "If you decide to carry to term," he held up a hand to ward off my impending explosion, "then my recommendation is that we get you into Helen Fuld right now. Tonight. You need bed rest and monitoring, and access to immediate medical intervention should it become necessary." If I started to bleed to death and my baby died, he meant. God.

"And she'll be okay, then?" I asked.

He shook his head. "I can't guarantee you anything at this point. It's just too tenuous. But it's the best chance she has."

I started to tear up and my throat felt like somebody had tightened a noose around my neck.

"And you need to stay calm," he stated. Calm? That was a laugh. "Any increase in blood pressure restricts the blood flow to the placenta. Less blood means less oxygen and fewer nutrients are getting through. She can't afford to lose either."

I nodded my understanding. Calm, then. I would be calm as pond water. If MaryLou wasn't still in the waiting room, I'd have him call for an ambulance. Calmly. I'd call my mother when I got to the hospital. And I would be completely serene. I closed my eyes and took another deep breath. I pictured all my blood vessels opening up, carrying plenty of oxygen. Calm. I could be terrified later, but right now, my daughter's life depended on me being perfectly calm.

Mary Lou was still waiting for me when I carefully walked into the waiting room. As far as I was concerned, the contents of my uterus were made of spun glass, and there was no such thing as too careful. MaryLou stood when she saw me, her eyes full of questions. I knew that tears had left ugly mascara tracks down my face, but I had more important things to worry about right now. "MaryLou, I need to get to Helen Fuld," I told her quietly. I could see the questions rushing to her mouth even as we stood there. And I didn't mind answering them, but not until I was safely cocooned in the safety of Helen Fuld's high risk maternity floor, with as many gadgets and gizmos as they could produce that would keep my daughter's heart beating. I was lost without that reassuring pock, pock, pock and I wouldn't be able to think clearly until I could listen to it again. I forestalled her questions. "I'm pregnant MaryLou, and something is wrong with my baby. Please, I just need to get to the hospital." MaryLou took my arm as if I were made of glass myself and helped me lower myself carefully into a chair.

"Wait here while I go pull the car up in front," was all she said as she ran out the door.

Dr. Benardi came out of his inner sanctum then and tried to smile reassuringly. He really needed to practice that one, because he wasn't doing so good. "I've called a high risk OB. Michael Cruz. He's a good man, and he'll take good care of you." I just stared at him blankly. "And your baby. They'll be waiting for you at Helen Fuld and take you straight up. They're getting your room ready right now."

I nodded. Calmly. Good. One thing at a time. First thing was to get me and whosit to Helen Fuld so they could make sure she was safe. I rested my left hand gently on the barely discernable mound hidden under the fly of my jeans. How stupid. I'd always worried about pregnancy making me get fat, and here I sat wishing like anything that I was big as a house, that my baby was fat and dimpled instead of tiny and struggling. I teared up again, despite my best efforts.

Let it go, Stephanie. You can't change what's already happened, you can only go forward. And step one was getting myself to the hospital. One day, one minute, one step at a time, if that's what it took. Focus on the goal, as Ranger used to tell me. Focus. My goal was keeping my daughter alive. Anything else just didn't matter.

MaryLou sat with me until I sent her home. She would have stayed longer, but I lied and told her I was tired and wanted to be alone. I really didn't, but MaryLou had a husband and three kids. There would be dinner to get and homework to go over, not to mention hearing ad nauseum about the highlights of Mikey's soccer game. And the awful truth was there wasn't a thing she could do for me besides hold my hand and count the spaces between my baby's heartbeats. One hundred and thirty-eight beats a minute sounds pretty fast until you're waiting between one beat and the next. It's amazing how many doubts, how many fears can crowd in and choke you in that fraction of a second between those tiny heartbeats. The nurse offered to turn down the volume so I could sleep, but my panicked reaction finally convinced her that it was better to leave those pocks echoing off the dingy walls of my utilitarian hospital room. Unlike the swank birthing suites at the newer hospitals, Helen Fuld had been built for efficiency and economy, much like my apartment building and the familiar municipal building downtown that housed the police department. The room was small, scrupulously clean with the buildup of years' worth of different antiseptics that seemed to seep out of the plaster on the walls. The floor was a scuffed but immaculate dark green linoleum that would probably last through another three generations. The metal blinds at the window had seen better days, but since the window only overlooked an airshaft it wasn't like there was a lot of traffic that direction. No couches, no comfortable loungers for visitors, just a couple of simple plastic molded stack chairs that had probably been hanging around since the Eisenhower administration, seats worn smooth and chrome legs still shiny. I didn't see any of it in those first hours, frankly, my eyes firmly focused on the small rise of my abdomen under the sterile white cotton blanket, and my ears tuned to the steady pocks from the machine connected to my belly by a rat's nest of wires.

My parents came that first night. My father stood silent sentinel against the far wall while my mother dithered and my grandmother told lame jokes. None of it fazed me. I was totally calm, all my focus centered on that small being whose existence I hadn't even suspected twelve hours before. Funny how your whole life can change so fast. My mother assured me she'd picked up Rex's cage and take care of him for me. That was nice, and I nodded dutifully. My grandmother started into a long and involved riff about some convoluted gossip she'd picked up at the beauty parlor that morning. I smiled politely and complimented the new lavender rinse on her hair. She was trying to help, and I appreciated the sentiment if not the story.

Then my mother started in about the phone calls, and I finally snapped out of my reverie. "No," I said, and shook my head.

"What do you mean?" my mother asked.

"I mean that it may be common knowledge that I'm in the hospital, but it's nobody else's business why," I insisted.

"Stephanie, people are going to know…."

"Not from you, they're not. And not from me. This is my business. My private business. I don't want." I broke off, and the silence became oppressive, the only sound that reassuring pock, pock, pock from the monitor.

"You don't want Joseph to know?" my mother finished for me.

I nodded, unable to speak.

"Sweetheart, you have to."

I found my voice again. "No! I won't be an obligation, do you hear me? I won't." I could feel the blood rushing through my veins, and heard the baby's heart rate pick up in response. Damn.

"Look, Mom. I don't want to argue. I'm not supposed to get upset, okay? It's not good for the baby. But I need you to respect my wishes on this." I made an effort to slow down my breathing and think calming thoughts. "Joe is making a new life for himself, and he deserves to be able to do that. I'm not going to try and trap him back where he doesn't want to be. And he doesn't want to be with me, Mom. He doesn't. He told me."

"This is his child, Stephanie."

I smiled at that, for the first time since before I'd walked into the doctor's office that day. For the first time in a long time. "I know." I closed my eyes and savored the thought as my family made their way quietly out the door. Against all the odds, and in spite of everything, I had a tiny miracle growing inside of my body. A small part of Joe remained after the ashes of our relationship had burned themselves out; or rather after I had sent the whole thing up in flames. Still, she survived, and her tiny heart that was the repository of all my dreams, all my best and fondest wishes, kept beating.

Hope. I would name her Hope.

The first few days in the hospital passed in a monotonous haze. Under any other circumstances, I might have started climbing the walls, but I was just too worried about Hope's continued survival. I kept thinking if I just did what the doctors told me to do, we would get better. The doctors, in the meantime, conferred in hushed tones outside my door, speaking a convoluted jargon of medical terms designed to obscure reality from their patients and perhaps themselves. They spoke in terms of "fetal viability" instead of life or death, in milligrams instead of pounds. The cruel reality was, of course, that the designer words didn't make my situation any more palatable. When all the medi-speak was done, the crux of the matter was that Hope was painfully undersized and they didn't know if my body could sustain her to the point where she could survive in the outside world. I finally gleaned that the magic number was 28 weeks and 2 pounds. There were still no guarantees, but if she and I could make it until I was was 28 weeks along and she weighed two pounds, her chances of living were dramatically improved. I'd been admitted to Helen Fuld at almost 25 weeks, as near as we could figure. The only date we had to go by was that last night I'd spent with Joe two weeks after Black Thursday. I kept hoping that maybe, just maybe I'd really gotten pregnant before then. I didn't think so, but for the sake of Hope's survival, I really hoped I was wrong.

When I was wearily marking off week number 26, my sister Valerie went into labor with her fourth baby. She had gone almost three weeks past her due date, and had lumbered in during the preceding week bemoaning her aching back and swollen feet, complaining that she would be pregnant forever. After the third straight day of listening to her harangue, I got fed up. I finally lashed out at her that she was lucky and should be thanking God that she was able to carry her baby so long. I was to the point of hating the sight of her burgeoning belly, such an obvious sign of success when compared to my tiny, struggling bump that barely showed under the blankets. Valerie had three perfect little girls at home, and another floating contentedly in her healthy abdomen. While Albert Kloughn wasn't a man I would have chosen, he loved Valerie and the girls with all of his palpitating little heart. I wasn't one to sit around and mope over my own situation, but drumming up a lot of sympathy for Valerie was just something I couldn't manage right then. Valerie cried, I cried, my mother fussed at both of us until we both snarled at her to leave us alone. At least that left us laughing through tears and connected to each other. The night Valerie went into labor, she had the nurses bring a rocking chair into my room and we sat up late into the night listening to the competing heart monitors of our babies, the steady beats of their hearts a rhythmic background music to our own conversation. Valerie and I had separate rooms growing up, except when relatives would come to visit. Then the relatives would get Valerie's room because she kept her room cleaner than I did, and Valerie would be stuck bunking in with me. Those were great adventures, though, and we'd sit up long into the night, like now, telling each other our secrets and dreams, feeling more connected to each other than in ordinary times when we just coexisted side by side. So Valerie rocked and told me about how lost she had felt when Steve left her for the babysitter. And I rubbed my belly in sympathy with her contractions and told her about how bereft I felt without Joe. We talked of our hopes and our dreams for our babies, and how we hoped they'd grow up together, laughing and playing together, close as sisters. Close as we had been when we were little. When had we grown apart? I couldn't remember and neither could she, but it had somehow happened when we weren't paying attention, and we vowed to make things better for these two little girls who would be born so close together. A few hours later, her contractions reached a crescendo, and the nurses bore her away to the delivery room, a nervous and sweating Albert Kloughn in tow.

After a lot of panting and swearing, her 7 pound 3 ounce daughter Vanessa made her appearance in the wee hours of the morning. Albert left to go home and sleep, and Valerie managed to talk the powers that be into moving her and Vanessa into my room with me. It was small and it was crowded, especially with Vanessa's isolette, but my beautiful new niece gave me something to focus on. When she wasn't nursing her new daughter, Valerie would bring Vanessa over to my bed and we'd drape her across the bump in my bedclothes. Vanessa would squirm and kick from the outside, and Hope would answer with tiny flutters of her own, as if she knew her cousin was there to see her. I could stroke Vanessa's silky hair and soft skin and remind myself why all this waiting and monotony was worth it. At the end, if God were kind, I would have a perfect angel of my own to suckle at my breast.

Valerie was discharged the next day, and left in a flurry of balloons and flowers, with promises to come back and visit the next day. I knew she would be hard-pressed for time and might not make it, but the connection the two of us had managed to create still left me with a soft glow in my heart. I might not have Joe, but I had rediscovered my sister, and I would be hard-pressed to have a better friend that MaryLou had been to me since Joe had left. Lula blew in like a summer storm, with lots of bluster and thunder, her visits short but intense. If Lula didn't like the police station, it was nothing compared to how much she hated the hospital after Ramirez had cut her up so badly and left her for dead. I think the hospital still holds a lot of ghosts for Lula, and I know her periodic forays into the dreaded halls took a lot of courage, and I appreciated that she would face down those demons for me. Vinnie and his wife brought flowers once, and Connie had taken to coming by on Mondays after work to keep me informed about who had been arrested, who had bail jumped, and general gossip that developed in the Burg over the course of a weekend. She and I both knew that it would be a long time, if ever, before I would be willing or able to go back to bounty hunting, but the conversation kept me occupied, and that was what I needed more than anything else as the days wore on.


	5. Chapter 5

Angie Morelli came to see me on a Thursday afternoon. I had been half-dozing in the afternoon sunlight when she knocked softly and let herself in. I didn't know what to say to her, so I just stared. "Hello, Stephanie," she said hesitantly. "How are you feeling?" How was I feeling? Well, the placenta had continued to separate from the uterine wall, so I was now bleeding in a steady trickle. They were giving me all kinds of medications to help "mature" Hope, but we were still at least a week away from that magical 28 week mark. I had a headache from the potassium, and the steroids they'd starting pumping me full of to help develop her immature lungs were making me feral. How was I feeling? Like I could peel paint off of aluminum with my fingernails, that's how I was feeling.

"Fine, Mrs. Morelli," I said like an automaton.

She nodded. "I needed to come and see you."

I just looked at her, fear clawing at my gut. "Does Joe know you're here?"

She shook her head. "No."

Okay, one down. "Does Joe know I'm here?"

"Not that I know."

I relaxed. "Okay. Why did you want to see me?"

"You're carrying Joe's baby," she said.

I nodded. I might not want him to know, but I wasn't going to lie.

"You didn't have to."

"No," I answered, unsure where she was going with this.

She fished around in her purse and finally pulled out a beautiful antique rosary, the beads obviously hand-carved. It was obviously very old and very well loved, the intricate workmanship a true work of art. She slid the beads through her fingers like worry beads, and stared at the crucifix intently as she began to talk, her words tumbling out over the top of each other. "Rocco, my husband," she started, as if I didn't know who Rocco Morelli was, "wasn't a good husband. He wasn't a good father, either." She looked up at me then, and her eyes were open like a child's. "But I loved him. Far too much, really, but I just couldn't resist him." She paused for a few minutes and worried at her beads, then started up again in a soft dreamy voice that was obviously far from the antiseptic hospital room we occupied. "He was handsome and charming, and I thought the sun rose and set with him. He could charm the birds out of the trees, and any girl he met out of her underpants. Including me." She shook her head at the memory. "Before I knew it, I was pregnant for Tony, then Paul. And I kept thinking that Rocco would settle down, quit drinking, quit chasing young girls, and learn to love me as much as I loved him. And then I had Mary and Cathy. Four babies in seven years, and only Tony old enough for school. And still Rocco drank, and gambled, and had his women. By then, I wasn't so in love any more, but I didn't have a lot of options. I'd married Rocco right out of high school and I had my babies to think of. They needed their father, or at least I thought they did." She sat for a long time, then, and said nothing.

"What happened then?" I prompted. I didn't want to break her reverie, but obviously there was something she wanted to tell me by coming here today. If she was going to compare me to the faithless Rocco, I wanted her to get it over with and get out, frankly.

"I saved up my grocery money. We lived on spaghetti and marinara sauce, but I hoarded everything I could. Pretty soon, I had enough saved up to leave. To make a new start somewhere else. For me. For my babies." I knew Angie Morelli had never left Rocco, but stayed with him until the day he died, far too young, but not soon enough to spare his children from the "Morelli curse" of a lousy father. So something had happened between her saving her nest egg and the time when Joe's father had died while he was a teenager.

Wait. Four babies, she said. Four. Joe was Mrs. Morelli's fifth child.

Understanding must have dawned on my face.

"Just so," she said. "Just so. I found out I was pregnant for Joseph. And I cursed God. I had finally found my way out, and here I was tied back to Rocco and his drinking, and his women, and his fists. I hated God in that moment." She stopped for a minute to caress the crucifix then continued. "And it wasn't like it is now. There were no clinics, no doctors. There was only a whispered name. A man who came through town every few weeks with a folding table in a dirty basement. And it would take all my hard-earned money to pay him. I'd have to start over with my nest egg, but at least I'd only have my four babies to worry about, instead of five."

Tears were swimming in her eyes, and they were in mine as well. "I can't imagine a world without Joe in it," I finally choked out.

"Neither can I," she agreed, and patted my hand. "When the day arrived, Tony wound up in the hospital with appendicitis. His appendix burst on the table, and we didn't know for several days if he was going to live or die. By then, of course, the man with the table was long gone. And I'd nearly lost one of my babies to a massive infection. It somehow made my newest one that much more precious to me."

She finally put down the rosary, and came to sit close beside me on the bed. "You could have gotten rid of Joseph's baby, Stephanie, but you didn't. Just as I kept him. And I can tell you that he has been the joy of my life. I have never regretted it, not for one minute." She reached down and placed her own warm fingers over my own, shielding my precious daughter. "You will never regret giving this child life, Stephanie. She can and will bring you the greatest joy. I promise you that."

I nodded through my tears. "Does Joe know?" I had to ask.

Mrs. Morelli shook her head. "No. I never told him. He didn't need to know."

I nodded my agreement. Mrs. Morelli handed me the rosary she'd been worrying. "This was my grandmother's. Maybe someday you'd like your child to have it."

"Hope," I told her. "I'm going to name the baby Hope."

"It's a girl?" Her smile softened her face and dropped twenty years from her age. I nodded. "Then tell Hope this is from her grandmothers, would you? And that we love her very much."

"I will," I promised. She rose to leave and I stopped her with a word. "Mrs. Morelli? Thank you. For telling me."

She nodded and swiped a few errant tears of her own. "Call me Angie, please. And I'd like come back from time to time, if that's all right with you. Maybe see the baby, if you don't mind."

"I don't mind. I don't want to tell Joe, though," I explained. "I don't want to be an obligation to him, and Hope deserves more than that."

Mrs. Morelli thought for a minute, then finally said, "I think you underestimate my son, Stephanie, and I think you underestimate yourself. But this is your decision to make, and I'll abide by it."

"Thank you, Angie."

She came back over and gave me a light peck on the cheek and ran cool fingers over my hair and across my belly. "I'll see you in a few days." I nodded and soon fell into a drugged sleep.

When I woke the next time, the room was dark. The reassuring rhythm of Hope's heartbeat soothed my steroid tightened nerves, and I stretched languidly, trying to find a comfortable position. My skin felt tight and distended, with a preternatural elasticity. My stomach still roiled and my heart raced periodically in reaction to the chemicals warring inside my body. Two days before, the nurses had confiscated the stash of Boston Cremes Lula had sneaked in to me. The steroids were driving my blood sugar levels up into the stratosphere, so sugar was now contraband. The same bloodthirsty nurses had taken to coming by at irritatingly regular intervals to poke holes in my fingers to take blood out, then poke matching holes in my rapidly expanding backside to put insulin in. I wondered how much longer it would be until an overly cheerful bloodsucking vampire disguised as a nurse would waltz in to turn me back into a human sieve.

My eyes didn't need to adjust to the dark, and I realized I wasn't alone. The scent of Bulgari reached me, tickling an awareness deep in my aching bones. My body reacted like it did to most things these days, with mixed signals. Part of me was reassured by Ranger's presence, and the rest of me was repulsed by the cloying overly spicy scent of green tea. It reminded me far too much of the unknown woman's perfume that had emanated from Joe's clothes the last night I spent with him. The memories associated with that last time I'd seen him still cut like shards of glass, and the scent memory was one I really didn't need. I couldn't explain that to Ranger, though. I could barely explain it to myself. I settled for a non-committal "Yo," of greeting.

"Babe," he answered. Typical. I smiled in spite of my discomfort. Good to know some things never change. "How you feeling?"

I pondered that one a minute. Most of the time, I put everyone off with a deceptive but insistent "fine" and they were willing to let it go at that. But I wasn't fine. And Ranger knew that. If there was any positive thing that came of our Long Talk, it was that we'd finally managed to cut through the superficial bullshit. Ranger had been straight with me, about his feelings and his past, and I owed him the same honesty. "Scared," I finally answered.

He nodded sagely. "Understandable."

"Yeah," I answered in a shaky breath, and willed the tears to go back under my eyelids. That was why I kept everyone at bay. If I kept up the "fine" veneer, I wouldn't crack. I was desperately afraid that if I ever let go, if I ever released all this pent up stress that was coiling like a serpent deep inside my soul, I would start to scream and cry, and I would never be able to stop. And I couldn't do that. Who would pick up the pieces if I shattered in my self-imposed exile? Hope needed me to stay calm. I took a steadying breath. It didn't help much, but everybody says practice makes perfect, right? Obviously I just needed a little more practice, that was all.

"You'll get through this," he said, and I nodded, still not trusting myself to speak. Frankly, he had a lot more faith in me than I had in myself, but I was terrified to give voice to those fears playing hide and seek deep in the recesses of my psyche. I had to be strong, or at least I had to pretend to be strong. Hope needed me. I was all she had.

"You shouldn't be going through this alone," he finally said. I frowned at him. I wasn't going through this alone. I had Hope. She was my reason for breathing. "What I mean is, you're going to need help for awhile. Hospital bills, getting back on your feet, that kind of thing." Was he offering me money? Geez, that was really sweet of him, but there was no way I could take money from him. It had been uncomfortable enough when I was working for Rangeman. "So I think we ought to get married."

I goggled at him. Seriously, I think my eyes about bugged out of my head.

When I finally found my voice, I said, "So you woke up this morning, and decided you were madly in love with me, couldn't live without me, and suddenly found the idea of till death do us part and raising another man's child appealing. Is that about right?"

"Well, I wouldn't exactly put it that way," he admitted.

I was starting to get pissed off. Granted, part of it was probably the steroids, but part of it was undoubtedly testosterone poisoning. Damn the man. "So how would you put it? Exactly." My tone should have given him a warning that he was treading on dangerous ground. Joe would have picked up on it in a heartbeat, but then again, Joe had been on the receiving end of my temper far more often than Ranger ever had. I'd have to give that some serious thought sometime. I'd been comfortable enough with Joe to be sanguine about losing my temper, but somehow with Ranger I'd always been on guard. Not a good sign, in retrospect, but I'd been too blind to see clearly at the time.

I heard rather than saw him get up out of the uncomfortable plastic visitor's chair and begin to pace the far confines of the room. Rather like a caged animal, I thought absently. I shook my head at his obvious discomfort. Just talking about marriage had him agitated, a state most people would never associate with Ranger. "Look, I've been thinking about this a lot, okay? And the bottom line is you wouldn't be in this predicament if it wasn't for me." He exhaled sharply through his nose. "If I'd backed off instead of pursuing you, you'd have Morelli here with you instead of being by yourself."

"So you feel guilty," I said softly. "Guilty and responsible."

"Yeah, something like that."

I tried my breathing exercises. I tried finding my happy place. I really did. For about two seconds, but I was so infuriated, I about exploded right there on the bed, despite being hooked up to all the tubes and wires. "Let's get a few things straight, okay?"

He nodded. Stupid man.

"First of all, I'm not in a predicament. I'm pregnant. There's a big difference." I ticked off another finger, and my voice notched up in volume, just a little bit. "Second of all, I'm pregnant because I decided to crawl into bed with Joe Morelli and fuck him blind when he was too damn drunk to realize what he was doing. My choice, my responsibility. Mine. No one else's. Not yours. Not his. Mine. Nobody forced me, nobody coerced me. I got there under my own power, with all my faculties clear. You got that?"

He nodded some more and tried to make some vaguely shushing motions with his hands. Didn't do any good. My voice ratcheted up some more.

"Third of all, if I refused to be nothing more than an obligation to the man I love, who actually used to love me back, why would I want to be an obligation to a man who doesn't love me? I'm not talking about in your own stupid, limited way, here, Ranger. I'm talking about love with a capital L, the kind of love that makes you want to grow old with someone, makes you want to take care of them, wake up next to them every morning for the rest of your life kind of love. I won't settle. Not for you, not even for Hope. I know what it's like to be loved that way, and I won't sell myself short for something less." I could feel my neck veins standing out there at the end, and probably the red flush I could feel creeping up my face wasn't such a good thing. I heard the scuffle of rapid footsteps in the hallway and belatedly realized I could hear my own words echoing back at me from the empty corners of my sterile little box-like room.

A bright rectangle appeared and Helen Fuld's answer to Nurse Cratchett poked her head around the door frame. "Everything all right in here?" she asked, giving Ranger a look that would have had a lesser man shaking in his leather boots.

"Fine," I bit out, since I'd had lots of practice at it. The look I sent her must have really been a doozy, because she poked her head right back out again, though I did notice she left the door open as a preventative measure.

"I think you're a lot more to Morelli than an obligation," Ranger said quietly.

"Yeah?" I challenged.

"Yeah. You're the mother of his child."

As suddenly as it had come, my anger drained out of me. "Yeah," I replied wearily. "Look what a difference that made for you and Rachel." Oh, ouch. That was below the belt, and I immediately regretted it. "I'm sorry," I apologized, and meant it. "I shouldn't have said that. Just don't forget I'm also the one who broke his heart. The one who publicly humiliated him. The one who drove him away from his friends and his family." I laughed bitterly. "Yeah, I'm lots of things to Morelli, Ranger, but none of them are good."

Ranger just shook his head at me and smiled sadly. I reached over and placed my hand on his, where it rested on the mattress, wanting to make amends for my hurtful comment. "But thank you."

He looked at me, brown eyes confused and full of questions. "Thank you for what you tried to do tonight. I know what it cost you."

He smiled again, a little more broadly. I couldn't resist teasing him.

"Just think. I might have said yes." I grinned up at him, grateful for his strength and his support. "You could have been looking at dirty diapers, and white picket fences, and having to trade your cherished Cayenne in for a minivan."

"Perish the thought," he quipped in return, the smile finally reaching his eyes, and bringing the ambient light in the room up a few hundred watts. Then he got serious again, and his hand moved to cover that precious swelling on my abdomen. "I still think you should tell Morelli," he said quietly.

"Tell me what?"


	6. Chapter 6

"Just think. I might have said yes." I grinned up at him, grateful for his strength and his support. "You could have been looking at dirty diapers, and white picket fences, and having to trade your cherished Cayenne in for a minivan."

"Perish the thought," he quipped in return, the smile finally reaching his eyes, and bringing the ambient light in the room up a few hundred watts. Then he got serious again, and his hand moved to cover that precious swelling on my abdomen. "I still think you should tell Morelli," he said quietly.

"Tell me what?" The tone was deliberately casual, but the tension in his body was unmistakable. If I'd had any sense, I would have closed my eyes and begged God for a do-over. I'd been doing that for more than six months, though, to no avail. Obviously, God had it in for me, and I wasn't going to cut a break. I even started to say, "This isn't what it looks like," when I stopped myself. I would have laughed if I weren't so close to tears. The irony was overwhelming. I'd said those very words to Mooch and Tony when half the Burg, including Joe, had caught me with Ranger's hand down the front of my shirt on Black Thursday. The situation then, of course, had been exactly what it looked like. Now, however, the situation was entirely different, but I knew Joe would never believe that. I couldn't say I blamed him given my past transgressions, but that didn't make his accusing glance any easier to swallow. If anything, it made it worse.

Ranger's hand snaked back from my belly, and he brushed past Joe like a whisper. Ranger was smoke.

I finally gave in and closed my eyes, unable to bear up under the anger in Joe's gaze. Deserved or undeserved really didn't matter right now. In either case, I couldn't spare the emotional energy for whatever confrontation he had in mind. I had to focus all my efforts on Hope. I laced my hands together over my precious baby as if to protect her from the hard words and anger that boiled just under the surface, silent and unspoken. I concentrated hard on the blue stones in the friendship ring Joe had given me years before. Somehow the hard bite of the sapphires on my fingers served as a connection to Joe, and I had worn the ring religiously since he'd left, switching it to my pinkie finger when my fingers had swollen after my admission to the hospital. I carefully addressed my words to the center stone.

"I'm sorry, Joe. I shouldn't have asked your mother to keep quiet about this. I shouldn't have put her in that position. I know how much your family means to you."

"Do you?" His question was hard and biting, and I mentally shored myself up to take whatever measure he needed to mete out. I would not break, not in front of him. Not now. "So if you know how much family means to me, how come I have to hear from Lenny Fucking Stankovic that I'm going to be a father, huh?" I could tell he was hanging onto his temper by a thread. He hadn't raised his voice, but he was more angry than I'd ever seen him. Oh, boy.

"And my mother knew about this? Fuck me." Shit. I really hoped he had missed that part. Still. Lenny ratted me out? Oh, I had a few words to say to Lenny Stankovic, and then I'd sic MaryLou on him. God help the man.

"How did you know I was here?" Last I heard Joe was firmly ensconced in Newark pretending that the entire city of Trenton didn't exist, which was part and parcel of the reason I was on Morelli Ignores from Joe's family. I had driven away their favorite person and he was staying incommunicado. I couldn't imagine Lenny Stankovic working up enough gumption to go all the way to Newark, track down Joe Morelli, and blindside him with the news that he was going to be a father. Lenny was an okay guy, but initiative had never been his strong suit. He and Morelli had hardly run in the same circles.

Joe gave me a small bitter laugh, looked down at his shoes, and shook his head. "I brought a woman home to meet my mother." Oh, God. In the back of my head, I always knew it would happen. Joe would meet somebody else, it was inevitable. Somehow, I'd just always thought I'd have more time to get used to the idea. Like a couple hundred years maybe. And I thought it would be from a distance. I never thought I'd actually have to hear him say the words. I'd have run out of the room if I'd been able, but the tubes and wires chained me to the hospital bed as effectively as any shackles could have done. I couldn't escape, so I'd get to hear all the sordid details whether I wanted to or not. If Joe wanted his pound of flesh, he would definitely get it. There was nothing but a huge oozing sore where my heart used to be.

"Ten minutes after I walk in, Lenny Stankovic is banging on my mother's front door, telling me he's gotta talk to me outside. He tells me if it was his woman up in Helen Fuld not knowing whether his baby was going to make it or not, he'd want to know about it. Said MaryLou would have his nuts for breakfast, but he thought I ought to know." He leveled a hard gaze right at me, and I didn't flinch. "Lenny Stankovic." He shook his head again.

"Six fucking months, Stephanie. When were you going to tell me?"

Sonofabitch.

Suddenly, the same red haze that hit me when talking with Ranger earlier was back. I felt it wash over me, bringing heat and rage in its wake. My eyes narrowed, and my fists balled with rage. "Fuck you, Joe."

He recoiled like I had slapped him, and started to speak, but I cut him off.

"Six months! You know what I was doing for six months while you were off in Newark finding a new girl? I was trying to work up the energy to dive under a fucking bus, that's where I was. Until MaryLou got scared I'd actually do it and strong-armed me into the doctors office so he could zone me out on enough drugs to keep me from offing myself. But here's the kicker, Joe—here's where it gets really funny. He couldn't give me any of those pills. Because it turns out I wasn't just suicidal, I was pregnant." Where the hell had the tears come from? I was still furious, and I wasn't finished with him yet.

"He started talking about options, and alternatives, and a woman's right to choose, and all of that. One part of my brain was thinking I should listen to him. The last thing you and I needed was a baby tying us to each other when you hated the sight of me. There was no way I was ready to be any kind of mother. I could barely take care of myself, let alone someone else. And then he started talking about the placenta tearing away, and the baby being compromised. And I couldn't hear any of the logical parts about how I wasn't ready to be a mother and how we didn't need a baby to complicate things. All I could hear was the sound of her heart." Tears were pouring down my face now, but I couldn't stop the torrent of words flowing out of me. I'd been so careful to keep everything bottled up, to keep my illusion of calm for the people around me, for Hope, for my own sanity. Now that carefully constructed facade was collapsing around my feet like a house of cards and I was powerless to stop it.

"Her heart was beating so strong, and so hard, and so steady. It was all I could hear. I knew she was struggling, she was trying so hard to stay alive. And in that moment, I knew I would do whatever I had to in order to help her." I swiped away my tears and met Joe's look with eyes that never wavered. "I've been fighting God every second since then. He wants to take her back, and I can't let her go. She's all I have left. And I'm all she has." I looked away from Joe, back to the heart shaped spot on the wall I'd come to rely on to center my thinking, to focus my thoughts. "It's all I can do to fight God right now. My daughter's life hangs in the balance. I can't fight you too. Not now." I closed my eyes wearily. "Go home, Joe. Go home to your new girl. Go home to your life. I can't do this right now. You want to know when I was going to tell you? When I knew whether or not she was going to live or die. That's when." I deliberately turned my face away from him and toward the wall. I ran my hands down over the thin cotton of the hideous hospital gown and soothed my unborn child. I rubbed her tenderly, pretending it was her back instead of the scratchy cotton stretched taut over my own skin. I cradled her gently, my hands resting under the swell of my belly to cozen her to me. I don't know who was comforting whom, but I needed the feel of her tiny weight to steady me right then.

"How's she doing?" His voice was quiet, barely above a whisper. I thought I felt his hand feather across the top of my head, but realized it was probably wishful thinking on my part. I opened my eyes and looked at him. He had moved the chair over next to the bed, and his eyes were focused on my belly with its precarious but precious cargo.

I shrugged. "Okay for now," I answered. He looked up at me, and I knew he wanted the real answers, the hard answers, the answers only another parent would have to have. "She's very small, Joe, and the placenta has partially torn away from the uterine wall. That means she isn't getting the blood supply she should be. Less blood supply is less oxygen, less nutrients. It's not good." He dropped his head and I could see him struggling for control. I reached out my hand before I could stop myself, and laid it gently on the back of his neck, my fingers feathering up into the soft waves with a will of their own. "She's holding her own, though. She's a strong little girl." He raised his head back up, and I dropped my hand as if burned. I continued, "The doctors are really cautious, and don't want to commit themselves. But they're pumping me full of steroids to try and mature her lungs so she can breathe. If we can just hang in there until I'm 28 weeks and she's two pounds, she's got a lot better shot."

"Two pounds." He shook his head. "Jesus."

"I know," I said solemnly. "But that's what they're telling me."

"And you're how far along?"

I looked away from him then. "We, uh." I cleared my throat. "We think a little over 27 weeks." I stopped and gathered my thoughts, looking anywhere but at him. "We've been assuming I got pregnant that last time, but there's no way to tell. Frankly, for her sake, I hope I got pregnant before that, but I just don't know."

The silence stretched between us for so long I thought I would scream. I finally couldn't take it any more. "I'm sorry, Joe. That night, I shouldn't have. Well, I should have stayed on the couch. But I didn't." I took a deep breath, determined to finish this. "You were asleep, and I wanted one last memory. To last me. It was selfish, and now this is my punishment." I swallowed back tears, and choked out, "I just wish God would punish me and not her."

"I wasn't asleep."

I thought about that one. "Drunk then." I shook my head. "Doesn't matter. Hardly in a condition to give consent."

"Don't do this Stephanie," he said, shaking his head. "Yeah, I had too much to drink, but I knew what I was doing when I slid inside of you." The muscles along his jaw clenched and released. "You weren't the only one who wanted one last time to remember. So don't do this to yourself. There's plenty of guilt to go around."

Guilt. Yeah, it had become my closest friend. It ate away at me when I was awake and robbed me of sleep at night. I couldn't meet my own eyes in the mirror any more, because I didn't like what I saw reflected there. Hope, at least, had given me a reprieve from the awful, heart-gnawing knowledge that I had betrayed Joe. Had caused him so much hurt that he'd left his home and family to escape.

"What was he doing here?"

"What?" I had been lost in my own morass of negativity, and Joe's question caught me by surprise.

"Manoso. What was he doing here?"

I stifled a wild urge to laugh. Oh, God. It was too much.

"He asked me to marry him."

Well, that certainly got his attention. His dark eyes bored into me with an intensity I hadn't seen before. "What?" Low, menacing. Territorial? I couldn't hope for territorial, but I knew I would reexamine all the nuances of that 'what' long after Joe left.

"He felt guilty," and this time, a small, bitter laugh did escape me, despite all my efforts. "He, uh, thought that if he had backed off when I asked him to, then you would have been here with me and I wouldn't be here by myself in this 'predicament', he called it."

I saw the feral gleam grow more pronounced, though his voice never wavered. If anything, he was speaking softer now than he was before. "You told him to back off and he didn't?"

I shook my head. "Not like you mean, Joe. I wish it were that easy." I swallowed hard. "Like you said, there's plenty of guilt to go around. I have to own my share."

Joe exploded out of the chair, and it skittered up against the far wall. "Well, fuck guilt. And fuck Manoso!" He began to pace restlessly. "This is not how it was supposed to be."

"So how was it supposed to be, Joe? Huh? God doesn't give do-overs. Believe me, I've tried." I hated sounding bitter, but there wasn't anything I could do about it.

He raked his fingers through his hair, and my palms itched. My hands still burned as if branded from the brief time I'd touched his hair. Soft, like the finest silk. An oddity in such a masculine man, it was as if I could still feel his hair flowing under my fingers as I sifted through the fine strands as he rested his head in my lap while we watched some inane gore-infested guy movie. Joe's attention was always firmly on the screen, but mine usually wandered to the vibrant locks under my fingers. And then the movie would end, and his attention would shift to me. Sometimes his hair seemed to come alive under my fingers as I dug my nails into his scalp as his mouth moved over me in passion. Those strands had wound around my knuckles more times than I cared to remember as I'd held his head buried between my hips on long, languid nights long after the sounds from the movie had grown distant, and finally silent.

"Not like this," he finally said, and my attention snapped back from my reverie. I flushed with embarrassment that just the feel of his hair under my hands could evoke such vivid memories. If Joe had any inkling of the effect he still had on me, bloated, blotchy and minus any vestige of an hourglass figure, my humiliation would be complete. I shook my head to clear it.

"You want to talk about do-overs? How about this. How about if I never left that night?" I could see the guilt creeping in around the edges of his tight control.

"It wouldn't have made any difference," I answered calmly. If there was one thing I'd had time for over the past few weeks of staring at the ceiling and listening to my baby's heartbeat, it was running down each and every "if only" my tired brain could come up with. This might be new territory for Joe, but it was familiar, well-trodden ground for me. "Hope isn't in trouble because you left, or because I was a lousy girlfriend. The doctors don't know why. It just is, Joe. Don't do this to yourself."

"Okay, then what about this. What about if I'd never given you that ultimatum. And we'd never broken up. And you'd never slept with him." He was grasping at straws, and watching him tear himself apart was tearing me apart as well.

"Joe, don't. Please."

"What if I'd – I dunno, had you pick out those damn kitchen curtains that first morning at my house. You remember?" Joe was desperately looking for a way to control the situation. The cop in him was frantically searching for fixes and solutions that just weren't there.

"I remember, Joe," I said quietly.

"Part of me wanted to," he admitted.

"And a bigger part didn't," I countered. "It's okay, Joe. There's nothing you did."

He shook his head, still determined. "What if I hadn't left you that night at the bakery. What about then? Shit, we were so young." He got lost in memories of his own, just then. I could tell by the faraway sound of his voice, and his eyes were focused on things that had become nothing more than dust many years before. "You have no idea," he said, "what you looked like laying there. You looked up at me, and it was like you could see straight into my soul. It scared the shit out of me."

"I know."

"You deserved more than that, you know. You deserved better." He looked away and refused to meet my eyes. "Better than a quick roll on the concrete floor."

"I never had any regrets Joe."

"Still. I wish I'd stayed."

I smiled a little at that. "Somehow I think the owner would have been more than a little shocked the next morning."

Joe smiled in return. "Yeah. And your father would have been all over my ass."

"Count on it."  
"Shotgun wedding for sure," he said.

"I think my dad only has a Beretta," I teased. "Italian, you know."

"Of course," he conceded with a slight nod. "And the church would be decked out in yellow roses." I inclined my head in mock acceptance. "And Father Alphonse would have a blistering preamble just for us." I smiled again at him. It was so easy to slip back into sync with Joe. Sometimes I felt like he inhabited a part of me I didn't even know was there. It used to scare me. Sharing my body space with Hope, though, had made me less squeamish about the intimacy. It didn't feel cloying or forced, just like coming home at the end of a long, hard journey. Being with Joe, even teasing about our past like this was just home for me. If we were talking do-overs, I wished I'd realized this much sooner.

"And I would be the envy of every girl in the Burg," I closed my eyes and just enjoyed the sound of his voice washing over me.

"They're all positively livid. Sitting right on the front row." That was Joe, all right. I could always count on him to help make my fantasies come true.

"Terry Gilman, too?" I opened one eye and gave him a narrow look.

"She's bawling her eyes out."

"Good."

Joe's chuckle wafted over me, and I felt it warm me from my toes all the way to the ends of the hairs on my head. "You're wearing a white dress," he continued. "And then when it's over—" I interrupted him. I couldn't help myself.

"What about my dress, Joe? You can't just skip to 'when it was over'!"

Joe hemmed and he hawed, and he finally said, "Well, to tell you the truth, Cupcake, I never paid a whole lot of attention to the dress. I can tell you a lot of details about what you were wearing under it though. I had some pretty specific fantasies about that way into my thirties."

I couldn't help myself. I laughed out loud. That was just such a typically Joe answer that I started laughing and I couldn't stop. The harder I tried, the more the laughter just welled up inside of me. I couldn't remember the last time I had laughed so hard that tears came to my eyes. I couldn't remember the last time I had just felt happy. I finally controlled myself, and looked up at him through tear-studded lashes.

"And we would have been young. And we would have been poor." He reached over and brushed the hair back from my face in an old, familiar gesture that brought tears for another reason. "But we would have been happy." I nodded, content at least to be with him in his fantasy, a moment stolen out of time. "And our place would have been small, but we would have made room. Painted a nursery. Had a baby shower. Made a hash out of putting the crib together, and argued over where to put the rocking chair."

"I like your world," I said softly.

He just nodded, and moved his hand over the spot where our slumbering daughter lay. "May I?" he asked.

This man had been inside my body. Inside my soul in many ways. And the thought that he had to ask permission to touch my body, to touch his own child, cut me to the quick. "Of course," I answered, my voice thick with unshed tears. I took his hand, then, and carefully placed it atop my belly. I knew where Hope was likely to flutterkick, and we both waited for her to react to the warmth of her father's hand.

I felt the beginning of her flutter just then, under the large palm that rested on her sleeping place. I could tell the moment Joe felt her move. His eyes grew dark and soft, and his mouth softened and turned up in a small unguarded smile.

"Wow," he said.

"Joe, meet your daughter Hope." I carefully addressed my belly in an equally serious tone. "Hope, this is your daddy."


	7. Chapter 7

"Joe, meet your daughter Hope." I carefully addressed my belly in an equally serious tone. "Hope, this is your daddy."

And the dust motes stood still, suspended in the air once again. The silence was broken only by the steady beat of Hope's tiny heart. It was another moment that I knew would be etched on my memory until the day I breathed my last. If Black Thursday had been a low point in my life, and God knew there had been many over the years, then this magical Friday evening would live on forever as one of the high points. I was afraid to blink, afraid to shatter the fragile wonder of watching Joe's face light up when he felt his daughter move for the very first time. Whatever the future brought, this one perfect moment would sustain me, and I felt tears sting my eyes at the absolute perfection of that tiny slice of my life. If it was true what people said about God being in the details, then surely He was here with us in that plain hospital room. In Joe's face and Hope's infinitesimal movements, I caught a small quiet glimpse of eternity, and I felt the inherent rightness of the moment enfold my bruised soul like a benison.

"My God, that's amazing," Joe whispered. "She's amazing."

I just sniffled, too overcome to speak. That was the story of my life. Gifted with one of the most special moments in my life and not a tissue to be found anywhere. Figures.

Suddenly Joe's face took on a serious mein. The closed-off cop face shuttered his features, and I felt a wall drop between us. "We have to figure this out," he said quietly.

I took a calm, steadying breath. "There's really not a lot to figure out, Joe." I rushed ahead when he opened his mouth to argue with me. "At least at this point. Everything is so up in the air right now that it's impossible to make long-term plans." I could see he still wanted to interrupt, but was at least willing to let me have my say, and I was grateful for that. I steeled myself and kept going. "You have to know I would never stop you from seeing Hope. I would not do that, Joe—not to you and not to her. We can figure out the details later, assuming everything goes well." That was as close as I could come right then to admitting the bald, agonizing truth. The reality was that Hope might not survive more than a few moments or hours after birth, and the whole discussion of visitation and custody and relationships would be rendered moot.

Joe shook his head, clearly flustered. "I could not do that, Stephanie. I couldn't."

"You couldn't see her?" I was surprised. Joe had always been so wired into his own family, even talking about hypothetical children of his own someday that I hadn't even considered that he wouldn't want anything to do with Hope. My hands came down protectively over my abdomen, as if I could shield her from the words coming out of our mouths. I never, ever wanted my baby to feel anything but completely loved and wanted for who she was. She deserved that.

"No!" He practically shouted. "I can't imagine myself not raising my own child, Stephanie. That's what I meant." The air left my lungs with a whoosh. I hadn't even realized I'd been holding my breath. "She's my daughter," he explained carefully, "and you're her mother. You said you knew how important family was to me. That makes you and her my family, Stephanie."

Oh, God. Talk about a double edged sword. The first blade sliced through me when I realized that Joe would never abandon his own child, and the second hit when it was obvious Hope and I would never be anything but a burden to him. I couldn't do that to Joe, and I couldn't do it to myself or to Hope. All of us deserved better than that. I couldn't undo the past, but I could make the choice to stop causing Joe any more pain in the here and now. "No, Joe," I said quietly. "It makes us your obligation. Your burden, if you will. And I won't be part of that. I won't see you give up your own shot at happiness because you feel like you owe something to me or to Hope." He started to argue, but I pushed on. In the back of my mind was what he'd said when he first walked in the room. He's met a woman. A woman he cared about enough to bring her home to meet his mother. That wasn't something Joe Morelli took lightly. I didn't have the right to steal that chance at happiness away from him. I'd been enough of a destructive force in his life already. "It's okay, Joe. Really. I want you to be happy. I really, really do. Let me do this, please. It's the least I can do. I can let you go so you can be happy with somebody else."

He looked at me like I had sprouted horns.

Not exactly what I was expecting after offering the supreme sacrifice of giving him up. After all, I'd been through this before. I knew just how empty my life was going to be without him. Losing Joe Morelli once had just about destroyed me. I didn't know how I was going to keep on breathing through a second time, but I was determined for once in my infantile, over-indulged life to do the right thing. The least he could do was look appreciative instead of like I was nuts.

He shook his head slowly from side to size, clearly puzzled. "You really don't get it, do you?"

Suddenly, I was just so tired. Exhausted, even. I didn't know how much longer I could hold myself together through this confrontation. "Don't get what, Joe?" I asked listlessly. Please, God, let him say his peace and get out of here so I can have my mental breakdown without a witness.

"My father," he practically spit, as was usually the case on the rare occasions he mentioned his late, unlamented father. "My father was one of those men who saw his children, his wife, his _family _as a burden. Something that kept him from doing whatever it was he thought he wanted to do. Something that took up his time and resources." He studied his shoes for a moment, clearly trying to regain his composure. "I am not my father, Stephanie. I am _nothing_ like him."

"I know that, Joe." I started to explain that I had never meant to compare him to his father, but he cut me off.

"Taking care of those you love is not a burden, Stephanie. It is an honor for a man to take care of his children and their mother. An honor. Never a burden."

I shook my head to clear it. "But what about the woman you brought home to meet your mother? Do you love her?" I wasn't sure I wanted to know the answer, but I also knew it would eat away at me like a cancer until I did know it.

Joe hesitated for a minute, obviously choosing his words carefully. "I thought I could grow to love her."

"I am so confused." Funny, I didn't even realize I'd said those words aloud.

"Then let's keep it simple," he said. "You and Hope—you're my family. Whether we get married or don't get married, live together or not, doesn't make any difference. You're _my _family now. Nothing will ever change that."

Taking care of those you love is not a burden. I mulled that around for a minute, then gave it a few more turns for good measure. "How can you still love me?" That wasn't what I meant to ask, but that was what came out.

Joe just shook his head. "I don't know how to stop, Cupcake."

I reached out, then, finally. My hand was shaking and a part of me was still afraid to touch him, afraid he would draw back. He caught my hand with his own then, and laced our fingers together, bringing my knuckles to his lips, feather light against my skin. Tentative. Joe and I had been many things over the years: combustible, scorchingly hot and fevered, frantic sometimes in our coupling, and other times slow and langorous. But we had never been tentative, afraid to touch each other, feeling and picking our way through a minefield. Relief and desire swelled together within me. It had been so long since I'd felt his touch. I pulled him to me by our joined hands, and he came willingly. I laid my other hand along the familiar sandpaper of his well-after-five-o'clock shadow, and pulled him down to my mouth.

Tentative, yes. And sweet. But I didn't want to be treated like I was fragile. I wouldn't break, and I could feel the unmistakable flame spark between us even through the gentleness. I slid my hand up through his hair, letting my fingers play over the spot just behind his right ear that had always been so sensitive. The tip of my tongue traced the bow of his upper lip, and I bit down gently on his fuller lower lip, pulling it into my mouth. He settled his mouth against mine with a groan, and I smiled against his lips. It was still there. The old magic, the overwhelming heat. I pulled him over on top of me, my willing captive.

"We can't—" he protested.

"I know, I know. I just need to feel you."

"The nurse will see."

"Then get under the blanket."

"We can't."

"We _can_. We'll be quick."

"No, we won't."

"Then we won't. The hell with the nurse, I need you."

"Oh, God."

"Down further. Yes, like that."

"You're so wet."

"I want you inside of me."

"Soon. Not tonight, but soon, I promise."

"Yes. Oh, God, yes. Please!"

"You like that?" Soft laughter against my neck.

His name broke from my lips like a prayer, and he caught the sound with his eager mouth, plundering and pummeling until I finally felt his own release. He rolled quickly to the side, and ran gentle fingers down the side of my face.

"Jesus, I haven't done that since I was a teenager." He sounded half-pleased, half embarrassed.

Stretching slow and catlike, I answered. "Sometimes you have to improvise."

"Is that what you call it? In junior high we called it—"

I laid my fingers atop his lips to stop the words. "I don't want to know." He chuckled against my hand. "And this wasn't junior high."

I felt his mouth move back into serious lines. "No, it wasn't."

"Stay with me tonight," the words cost me, and he knew it. I couldn't face one more morning after the night before alone. My emotions were just too raw. " I know you have things you have to do," I continued. "Your family is waiting for you, and I know you have explanations to make to…." I broke off. I didn't know the name of the woman Joe had been involved with. Wasn't sure I wanted to.

"Traci," he supplied.

"To Traci," I finished. "But I need you tonight. I need you here with me." Dammit, I hated sounding needy, but I just could not face seeing Joe's back walking away from me one more time. It might only be temporary, but on top of everything else tonight, it was just too much.

"Then here is where I'll be." He got up then, and went to the adjacent bathroom. When he came out, he brought a wet washcloth with him, and cleaned us both up. He didn't say a word as he slipped off his shoes, and dropped his belt, wallet and car keys into the nightstand drawer. He carefully threaded his way through the wires and tubing connecting me to all the monitors and finally stretched out behind me on the narrow hospital bed. I turned toward him, and sank gratefully into my accustomed spot, head resting on his bicep, forehead resting against his shoulder. He kissed the top of my head like he had hundreds of times before, and we settled our arms and legs in a tangle that was as familiar as time. My knee rode up high on the outside of his hip, the other caught between his thighs. One of my hands curled up against his T-shirt and I frowned. "The hell with it," he finally said, and tossed the t-shirt over my head to land with a soft thud in the chair. I smiled quietly and resettled myself, this time curling my fingers into his chest hair, my other arm snaking around his waist. His free hand came up to commandeer my breast like always, and I sighed happily against the warm strength of him. Nestled in Joe's arms, I felt my body relax completely for the first time in forever. I was home. Hope gave a final admonitory kick, and Joe gave a sleepy chuckle, his hand moving down briefly to trace the curve of his daughter before returning to its customary place. Sleep was beckoning, and I fluctuated between wanting to stay awake and savor the feel of sleeping in Joe's arms and throwing myself headlong into what I knew would be a sleep that was finally restful and complete. His lips whispered across my forehead again. "Sleep now," he rumbled, and my eyes closed.

The sun came slanting into the airshaft way too early the next morning. I could feel Joe's even breathing and the steady thrum of his heart under my ear. His arms still held me, but I knew the moment my eyes opened that he was far from relaxed. "Did you sleep at all?" I asked quietly.

"Some," he answered.

Bullshit. "Joe?"

"I dozed," he finally admitted.

I pulled away from him. "I shouldn't have asked you to stay."

His finger came up under my chin and raised my face to meet his gaze. "You needed me to stay, and I wanted to be here. Okay?"

I shook my head. "No, not okay. Talk to me Joe."

Something was eating at him, or several somethings. He shook his head as if to dismiss my concerns. "I just have a lot on my mind, that's all."

"About Traci?" I guessed. His hands had been playing idly through my hair, and they stilled abruptly.

He nodded slowly. "Among other things," he admitted. His face was drawn and pale in the morning light, the lines fanning out from the edges of his eyes more pronounced with deep smudges below, staining the soft hollow between eye and cheekbone.

I smoothed back the creases near his eyes, and he let me do it, but his face remained remote. The past twelve hours had really taken a lot out of him, and that could be laid squarely on my doorstep. "I'm sorry, Joe." He made a dismissive gesture, but I continued anyway. "No, I mean it. I know this was a lot to dump on you at once, and I wish I knew of an easier way to do it."

"There was no easy way, Steph. It just is. And now we have to deal with it."

Tears welled up in my eyes. "I'm just sorry I made it so complicated. I wish—"

"No," he stopped me. "Don't. It's a waste of breath, okay? We can't go back. I can't go back and change things I did, and you can't go back to change anything you did. We can only go forward from here." He thought for a minute, his face very serious. "I don't want to start the rest of our lives together—Hope's life, with regrets. It may take some time to come to terms with everything, for both of us. But sitting here now and second guessing what either one of us should have done differently won't help our daughter. She's the priority, right?"

"Okay," I agreed. "The only thing is, Joe, I don't want us to shut each other out. I don't want you pretending everything is okay when there are obviously things bothering you. Talk to me. Please."

He shrugged and blew out a long sigh. "I need to go and talk to Traci at her hotel this morning. And I need you not to freak out about it."

Well, I'd asked for it. I tried to keep my breathing calm, I really did. It was a reasonable thing. The only trouble is, I didn't feel reasonable about it. "Are you going to sleep with her?"

He looked like I'd sucker punched him. "How can you ask me that?"

Suddenly, it all came boiling out. All my insecurities, all my vanity, everything. "Because she's prettier than me, I know it! She's probably younger, too and she's got big perky tits. She's probably got some fancy schmantzy job and has a really classy apartment. She's probably smart and funny and—" Joe cut me off the only way he could, with his mouth. It was just a light kiss, but it effectively shut me up.

"It's not a competition, Stephanie, and I'm not looking to trade up." His looked deep into my eyes, and I felt the coil of jealousy start to unwind, just a little bit. "I choose you, okay? And whether or not she's pretty, or how perky her tits are, or what kind of job she has doesn't matter."

I sniffed, slightly mollified, but still eaten alive with jealousy. "But she's pretty, isn't she?"

"Yeah, she's pretty."

"Is she younger than me?"

"She's twenty-eight." Bitch.

"And she's got big tits, right?"

Joe lowered his head, and started to chuckle.

"I knew it!" I threw my pillow over my face and I howled.

Joe picked up the corner of the pillow and peeked in at me. "Steph?"

I swallowed my sobs and looked at him with blotchy eyes. "I'm so sorry Joe," I sobbed. He looked puzzled. "I must have made you feel like this, and I'm so sorry! I wish I could take it back."

"Let's just give it some time, Cupcake. It'll be okay."

I nodded, and sniffled my way back to some semblance of dignity. "I know you have to go. I'll be all right." He looked at my splotchy face and tear-stained eyes and looked uncertain. "I will be, Joe. You go do what you have to do. And I'll be here. Waiting." I tried for a smile, but it was pretty watery.

"I'll be back in a couple of hours. I've got some things to take care of, but then I'm coming right back. Okay?"

"Okay." It wasn't okay, of course, but he'd been so damned reasonable about everything. I narrowed my eyes at his retreating back. I knew the kind of women who chased after Joe Morelli. I'd spent _years_ watching them hone their skills. Joe, for all his experience with women, was really far too trusting. He saw the pretty face and the perky tits, but _I _saw the devious conniving that went on below the surface.

Still. He had said he wanted me, big tits notwithstanding. Okay, then. I could be mature about this. I might even be able to manage magnanimous. I'd always wanted to be called magnanimous, and looking at things realistically, this might be my one shot. I didn't really have a prayer of ever being accused of being a good loser, not after my Exorcist head-spinning routine during my divorce from Dickie. I just wasn't wired that way. But being a gracious winner, well, now. There was something I might actually manage. I pictured myself looking all sympathetic and kindly toward Joe's soon to be ex-girlfriend. I would smile beatifically and there would even be a shimmer of sunlight all around me. Almost like a halo. Of course, in my mind, my hair wasn't sticking out sixteen different directions, and I was wearing something a lot closer to a bridal negligee, with acres of flowing chiffon to subtly enhance my barely burgeoning belly instead of the stupid cotton tent that must have been purchased from Ugly R Us. And I had on makeup. With no blotchy spots or baggy undereye circles.

The Nearly-Dearly-Departed, of course, would be tear-stained and angst ravaged. After all, I'd spent the night cradled in Joe's arms, and she'd spent the long night alone in a strange place. Probably her boobs were starting to sag, too. I could hope anyway. And she'd storm in screaming and raising hell, and through it all, I would be understanding and serene. I would empathize with her plight. After all, losing Joe was a tremendous blow, and any woman would be heartbroken. I would be mature. I would be calm. I would be wise. I smiled complacently to myself.

Piece of cake.

Like a lot of my really good ideas, this one worked out better in my head than it did in real life. And part of it worked out the way I planned—the part where she came in screaming and stomping, well, she did that right on cue about an hour after Joe left. I was actually pretty impressed with the extent of her vocabulary, and believe me, in Jersey it takes a lot to impress. And she was inventive, I'll give her that. The rest though, wasn't quite so good. Her boobs had definitely not started to sag, though I privately thought that was due more to silicone than good genes. Probably those boobs would withstand a direct hit thermonuclear blast without moving. But her face didn't blotch even a little bit, and she had acres of long blonde hair that was only artfully mussed. If this was how she looked after a long agonizing night, she really deserved killing. Justifiable homicide or something like that. Probably I shouldn't ask Joe about the particulars on that one, but there you go.

"I understand you're upset, Traci," that was me, Lady Bountiful. I'd seen her eyes narrow when I'd called her by name. Score one for me, and I hadn't had to get nasty to do it. This was going to work out okay after all. "Joe and I never meant for anyone else to get hurt." Eyes narrowed a little more. She didn't like the implication that Joe and I were the established couple, and that we'd maybe been talking about her, maybe even pitying her.

"He's only marrying you out of obligation!" she spat. He was marrying me? Well now, that's more like it. I felt a radiant smile creep up my face despite my intention to play nice, and I absently ran a comforting hand over Hope's morning acrobatics.

"If you say so." I thought I was remarkably neutral. I kept picturing some of the stained glass windows at St. Anselm's, with their serene angels who seemed to never get ruffled about anything. I was focused.

"And it doesn't bother you? The idea that Joe is only with you because you trapped him?"

Okay. That was far enough. I still didn't lose my temper. "If you really think that, you don't know Joe at all," I responded evenly, holding onto Joe's calming words from the night before like a talisman. I wasn't an obligation to him, no matter what this woman thought. Joe loved me, and he loved Hope. We weren't a burden, he'd called taking care of us an honor. My breathing was starting to quicken, and I could literally feel my blood pressure rising, but I made sure none of it showed on my face.

"Don't I?" she sneered. I looked over at her and examined her face carefully. Way too much bravado, and not nearly enough _knowing_. In that moment, I knew with absolute certainty that while this woman may have come to Trenton with Joe to meet his mother, she had never been in his bed.

"No," I said flatly. "You don't." She started to protest, and I held up my hand in the universal symbol for shut-the-hell-up. "You need to leave, Traci. Now. Before you embarrass yourself any more. Joe's a wonderful man, and I know you must be hurting that he's not going to be in your life any more. And I understand that. But I'm not going to sit her and discuss my relationship with Joe with you, or yours with him."

If looks could kill, I would have been six feet under, but she contented herself with nasty looks and made a big production of gathering her purse and fluffing her hair. I saw her inhale to excoriate me some more on her way out the door, but cut her off. "And Traci? One more thing."

She arched one eyebrow at me, and tried to look intimidating. Poor thing. I'd had lots more practice.

"If you ever come within ten feet of Joe again, I'll scratch your eyeballs out and hang them in your shirt pocket." I said amiably. I heard a hastily stifled cough that might have been a bark of laughter. I smiled like butter wouldn't melt in my mouth and gave her my patented little finger wave. I'd considered just the finger, but I didn't want Hope picking up any bad habits. I took a deep cleansing breath and stretched my arms above my head.

"So how much did you overhear?" I asked when the blonde waves finally huffed back down the hallway without another word.

"Enough," he answered, but there was a dimple playing around the corner of his mouth.

"And you didn't rescue me?" I demanded, half in jest.

He looked me square in the eye. "Seemed like you had a plan, and didn't need rescuing, Cupcake."

Well, yeah. I sniffed. But still.

"Besides," he admitted sheepishly. "I didn't want to make things any worse."

"Things didn't go well at the hotel?" I asked, at least slightly mollified.

"No," he shook his head regretfully, but the smile was hovering again.

"So what happened?" I couldn't help myself. I've always been inveterately nosy. This was not news to Joe.

"She was upset." No shit.

I just stared at him.

"And I think she's going to have a really hefty hotel bill when she gets home," he added. I still just gave him the stare. "I don't know what she threw at the door, but whatever it was that shattered sounded expensive," he explained sheepishly.

I just shook my head. "Where did you meet this woman?" And why had he ever thought she was someone he should bring home to meet his mother?

Now he really looked sheepish. "Terry introduced us," he admitted.

"Terry." I repeated. "As in Gilman." He just nodded.

"You are a complete idiot," I said without preamble.

He opened his mouth to argue, but thought better of it. I could see the thoughts chasing themselves around in his head. "Yeah," he finally admitted.

"Terry Gilman?" I was still in shock. "You're lucky she wasn't venomous!" He chuckled at that, and I thought once again that he was lucky he had me to look out for him from here on out. Imagine trusting Terry Gilman to fix him up with a new girlfriend. Only a man would have been that clueless.

"So what else did you do?" He looked at me with surprise. "Well, she got here before you did, and I assume that was after her tantrum at the hotel was over, so where else did you go? It hardly takes a detective to figure out you made some other stops, Joe." He laughed at me then, and things eased between us.

"I dropped of my house keys at my mother's, and had a few words with her." I must have looked alarmed because he leaned down and gave me a reassuring kiss on the forehead. "Don't worry. Not those kinds of words."

I frowned. "What kind of words then?" Sure, I didn't want Joe on the outs with his mother because she'd kept quiet about my hospitalization and pregnancy at my behest, but above all I was curious.

"The good kind," he said, noncommittally, and I smacked him on the arm. Hard. He laughed at me, and I started to think I was going to have to get my feet involved, but instead he laced his fingers through mine and began telling me about his morning. He'd gone to his mother's to make some phone calls. Tony and Mooch were going to open up the house. Cathy was going to load up on some groceries, and she and Mary would dust everything out since the house had been sitting empty for so long. Then he hit me with the kicker. "Then the guys are going to hit the hardware store and get some paint for the office. I figured pink to start with, but if you want something else we can repaint it later."

"Joe, I'm not sure that's such a good idea," I said shakily.

His jaw hardened. "Then you probably don't want to hear that I went out and bought a crib, too, but I did."

My face fell. "Oh, Joe. What if—"

"I'm fucking sick of what ifs, Stephanie!" he exploded. "What if she dies? Is that what you were going to say?" Numbly I nodded, unable to force any words through the constriction in my throat. Suddenly he deflated, collapsed in the chair, and cradled my hand in both of his. "Then we're going to be heartbroken. And nothing is going to make that any easier. But nothing will make it any harder, either. If we don't paint a nursery, if we don't put up a crib, and she dies, then it's like she never lived. And I can't live with that. And if she dies, and we never see her in that crib or in that room, will it make it hurt any more? Is it possible that anything could hurt more than that?"

I stopped and thought about that for a minute. I'd had both so much and so little time to think over the past weeks that I'd accepted the conventional wisdom from the experts at the hospital. _They _had said it would be easier if there were no empty nursery_. They_ had said it would be too painful to prepare for a baby that might not survive to come home from the hospital_. They_ had said. And I'd bought it. But Joe was right. _They_ didn't have to live through it_. They_ didn't have to face burying their child. _They_ weren't us. "You're right," I admitted. "If she doesn't make it, nothing we do or don't do will make any difference in how much we will grieve for her. You want to make a nursery, Joe? Do it. Make it beautiful for our girl." I smiled at him then, still a little watery, but whether or not Hope survived didn't change our status as parents. We were her parents, whether she lived or died.

"And I called Newark PD," he said after a few minutes. "Took a leave of absence and started the paperwork to return to Trenton."

"Is that what you want?" I asked, still uncertain, and I started to shake.

"Our lives are here," he said simply.

I tried to nod, but my teeth began to chatter, and the shaking got worse. "Steph, you okay?" I tried nodding again, but my head began to spin and I was unbelievably cold. "Steph?" His voice sounded like it was coming from a long way off.  
"Oh, God," I head him say. "You're bleeding."

I focused on his face, and realized that things weren't right. He was scrambling for the nurse's call button, and everything was moving so fast. I wanted to slow it down just for a minute. There were so many things I hadn't said yet. So many things I wanted to tell Joe. My hopes, my dreams, how much having his baby had meant to me, how precious she was, how much I loved him. But none of it would come out. Helplessly, I just looked at Joe as the world started darkening around him. Dimly, I thought that if his face were the last thing I saw, I would die happy.


	8. Chapter 8

I heard the steady beeping first. It was slow, far too slow. I tried to force my eyes open, force my leaden arms and legs out of the bed. The first waves of panic started to course through me. Couldn't anyone else hear it? It had started to pick up just a little bit of speed, but the electronic cadence was dangerously slow. The steady pocking of Hope's heartbeat monitor had kept a rhythmic vigil with me for weeks now, and I was well-accustomed to how it was supposed to sound. I had lived my worst moments between those steady beats, and these new sounds were nightmarishly slow. I felt like I was trapped in hardened cement, and finally tried to scream to get the nurse's attention. I tried for all the volume I could muster, and what emerged from my parched throat was barely a whimper.

"Hey, Cupcake," I heard his voice, and my protesting muscles relaxed. Joe was here. He would handle things. I had to make him understand.

"Monitor," I croaked, barely audible, even to myself. What the hell was wrong with me? "Too slow," I forced out, exhausted by the minimal effort.

"It's okay," he soothed, running a light hand over my hair. "It's your heart monitor, not Hope's." I frowned then, and tried to wrap my mind around what was going on. I remembered being cold, and then watching the darkness closing in on Joe's face, and that was about all.

"Do you remember what happened?" Joe asked. I started to nod, then shook my head instead. I was still really tired and my arms and legs felt like they weighed at least two hundred pounds each. I could barely move, and my tongue felt thick in my mouth. I was horribly thirsty, and my brain felt like it was disconnected from the rest of my body. I slowly became aware of a dull ache across my belly, and I started to move my hands to investigate. The smallest touch burned like fire, and I quickly drew in my breath. Tears tried to form in my eyes, but there wasn't enough moisture, and I felt my mouth open in a soundless scream.

"Steph? Listen to me. Stay with me, Cupcake. You're okay. The baby's okay." I turned questioning eyes up to meet his, begging for answers I didn't have the energy to voice. "You started hemorrhaging, Stephanie. You were bleeding pretty bad, and they had to do an emergency cesarean."

"Hope?" There was no sound behind her name, only my mouth forming the word.

"She's down in the NICU," Joe said carefully. "You did great, Cupcake. Two pounds, two ounces. You got her here." His eyes were soft, but there were worry lines across his forehead and fanning out from the corners of his eyes.

"Two pounds?" I wished I could get my brain to work. I wished I could get my voice working too. There were so many questions I wanted to ask.

"More than two pounds," he corrected. "She fits in the palm of my hand, but you got her to more than two pounds, Steph. You did great," he said again. He held a straw to my lips, and I drank gratefully, easing my parched throat.

"You held her?" I finally asked.

He nodded. "Just for a minute." He stopped to clear his throat. "She's perfect," he continued. "She's got a head full of dark hair, and the tiniest fingers I've ever seen." He had been absently toying with my fingers and he stilled. "She opened her eyes once, and I swear she looked at me."

"Yeah?" I couldn't help it. I was finally waking up, and I was starting to get excited.

"Mooch and Shirley brought in their old Polaroid camera," he said. "The pictures aren't the greatest, but I figured you'd want to see right away." I nodded my head vigorously, or at least I tried to, as he fished in his shirt pocket for the precious photographs.

I drew back in shock. Despite all the warnings, I'd been expecting a picture of a baby. Like Valerie's baby. With pudgy cheeks and a round little tummy. Instead, all I could see in those first minutes were a shock of dark hair and what seemed to be a rat's nest of wires and tubes, all hooked into what looked for all the world like a tiny bird, red skinned and helpless, with bones so tiny they seemed almost too fragile for this world.

Joe kept his voice steady. "Most of the wires are just monitors. I know it looks really scary, but when you see her you'll forget about the wires, I swear. Here's a closeup of just her face. See? She's got a little button of a nose, and her mouth is so tiny."

"She has eyebrows," I blurted.

He chuckled low in his throat. "Yeah, she does."

"They look so soft. And look at her ears. Joe, I swear, she has your ears."

He peered over my shoulder. "Do you think so?"

"Absolutely. I've seen those ears a million times, and those are your ears."

"Poor kid," he joked, and I playfully made a face at him.

"I happen to like your ears," I said. "My God, her hands are so small." He had continued to flip through the half dozen grainy Polaroid prints, making sure I'd seen everything I could of our daughter.

"I know," he said. "I put the tip of my pinkie in her palm, and her fingers barely closed around it."

"She held your hand!" My God, she was real. She was finally real, finally here, able to reach out and touch another human being. "Her lungs—is she breathing okay? And they said something might be wrong with her eyes. Are all her organs functioning okay? And what about—"

"Hey, Cupcake, it's okay. I'll tell you everything I know. Just calm down. I don't want you tearing open your stitches or anything."

I subsided back onto the bed, and waited with ill-concealed impatience. Good thing I was laying down, though, because I was still pretty light-headed. And I was so tired. Part of me felt like I could sleep for a week without moving, but the other part of me had to know what was going on with my daughter.

"First off, they had to do an emergency cesarean. I told you that part already, right?" I nodded. "Because of the way the placenta was blocking the cervix, they had to cut much higher than they usually like to. It was touch and go, but the doctors were able to stop the bleeding without doing a hysterectomy, but any future babies will have to come by c-section. You won't be able to deliver vaginally because the uterus could rupture." I nodded. I have to admit my heart skipped just a little when he said, "future babies" so easily. Future babies were good. Not right this minute with my belly burning like fire and Hope still in the hospital. But still. Good to know.

"They got her out really fast, Steph. And she started to cry as soon as her face hit the air. The doctors said that's really good. Her lungs were mature, and she started breathing on her own right away." I hadn't realized I was holding my breath until it rushed out of me. She was breathing. Her heart was still beating and she was breathing.

"She's not on a ventilator?" I asked. That had been one of the things the doctors had tried to prepare me for. If Hope were on a ventilator for an extended period, there were all kinds of complications that could develop. They had to weigh the consequences of her not receiving an adequate oxygen supply with the possible damage the ventilator could do, including rupturing her tiny lungs, brain damage, blindness, and a host of other things that had just washed numbly over me at the time, looming monstrously over Hope's future.

"Not right now. The doctors are cautiously optimistic. She's breathing on her own, and able to regulate her respiration when she sleeps, at least so far. That's why they have her on so many monitors. If her breathing or her heart rate becomes irregular, they have to be able to intervene right away. So far, she's holding her own. They've got her in an enclosed warming tray, with a supplementary oxygen cannula under the hood, but that's it. They've got her on a naso-gastric tube that continually gives her milk. She's so tiny that they don't want her to burn up calories she can't afford learning to suck and swallow yet. They're also worried that she won't be able to coordinate sucking and swallowing with breathing, so they're concentrating on her breathing. They said she can learn to nipple feed later, when she's stronger."

"What about her kidneys? Her other internal organs?" I knew that systemic failure was always an imminent possibility with a preemie.

"Well, she peed in my hand when I held her, and I thought they were going to break out the champagne down in the NICU," Joe said, and I saw him smile, really smile, for the first time.

I wrinkled my nose. "She peed on you?"

He held his shirt away from his chest. "All over my shirt," he said proudly, pointing out the small stain.

"When can I see her?" I asked, now that I had been reassured that she was doing all right.

"The doctor wants to check you out first, but said as soon as you felt up to it, I could take you down in a wheelchair."

The doctor poked and prodded me, and managed to squeeze a few tears out of me when he examined the slice in my belly. Thankfully, the nurse appeared with a shot of morphine as soon as he finished. I didn't enjoy the shot, but the blissful relief from the fire burning in my belly wound was welcome. Joe was careful wheeling me down the hall and onto the elevator, but I felt each crack in the linoleum and every bit of uneven ground sent me into agony. I didn't even want to think about how much it would have hurt if I hadn't had the morphine. I chafed at the delay at the entrance to the NICU when we had to decontaminate ourselves, but I understood the necessity. I wanted to touch my baby with my own hands, but those hands had to be as germ-free as we could make them. Hope and the other babies didn't have the ability to fight off normal germs like full term healthy infants would, so we had to take every precaution.

I saw her hair first, amazingly long and thick for such a tiny baby. Valerie's girls had always stayed half-bald until their first birthday, but Hope's hair was easily an inch long and covered her head like a cap. Whispers of eyebrows rose like tiny gull wings over her closed eyes, and her lashes brushed against the tops of her cheeks. Her minuscule nose was marred by the tube snaking into it, but I decided to ignore it. Her cheeks were round and full, and the tiny mouth pursed didn't look big enough to even emit a squeak. I said as much to Joe.

He chuckled. "Just wait. Believe me, with all those Italian genes, she's got a set of lungs on her, and some damn strong opinions."

"Don't say 'damn', Joe," I corrected automatically.

"Sorry, Cupcake."

"Can we touch her?" Even though she was sitting right in front of me, part of me still didn't believe she was real. I had grown accustomed to her small weight low in my abdomen, almost a comforting warmth that kept me company through the long nights in the hospital room. I'd love feeling her move inside me, and her heartbeat had marked the cadence of my days. But this was new. This whole separate, other living human being had memories and experiences apart from being attached to me, and I wanted to reestablish that connection as soon as I could. If I could touch her, hold her, it was almost like she would become part of me again, and I could keep her safe. I knew even as I thought it that it was completely illogical. Doctors and nurses and electronic equipment all buzzed around the NICU like worker bees at a hive, and all their attention was focused on the few small infants inside these protective walls. But none of them was Hope's mother, and that made all the difference. At least to me.

Joe gestured to one of the nurses, who seemed slightly less buzzed than the others, and she immediately came over to Hope's isolette. "You must be mom," she said and I almost jumped out of the wheelchair. I was mom. Wow. If I weren't so drugged, I'd probably have a panic attack about now, but I was too anxious to finally hold my daughter. I nodded, too overcome to speak. "Just let me check your ID bracelet," she said, and made quick work of making sure the plastic number around my wrist matched the number around Hope's ankle. My God. That little band of plastic was barely the size of a man's wedding ring. With practiced ease, the nurse disconnected several of the wires, then reconfigured some others before gently removing Hope from her plastic enclosure.

"It's better if we can have skin to skin contact, so if you want to undo your gown…" Undo my gown? Here? In front of all these people? My uncertainty must have shown on my face, even as my fingers were slowly rising to the tie behind my neck. "Hang on a second," she said. "The procedures room is empty. Why don't we take everybody in there so your family can have some privacy?" Privacy was good. Family sounded even better, and I felt a small smile work its way to my mouth. I felt Joe's hand squeeze my shoulder and knew I didn't dare even look at him or the waterworks would start. Instead, I reached up and laced my fingers through his, giving an answering pressure.

The nurse had Hope in a firm grip, and sailed to the far end of the room, Joe and I in her wake. I will say this, the nurse was very efficient. She closed curtains, flipped light switches, and peremptorily shoved equipment against the walls, all while cradling Hope securely in her left arm. I have to admit, I was impressed, and silently wondered if I'd ever achieve that level of expertise. I felt Joe's hands at the back of my neck, carefully pulling the ties open, making sure not to catch my hair as he did it. I slid my arms out of the short sleeves of the hated hospital gown, and the nurse gently lowered Hope onto my chest, then covered us both with a warmed white cotton blanket. My arms automatically came up to cradle her slight weight, and I looked down into her precious face. The nurse left us then, and quietly closed the door behind her.

I couldn't tell you if I spent two minutes or two days, then, just looking at her face. I studied every crease, every pore. She was infinitely precious to me. The way her dark hair whorled out from its center crown, the shell-like perfection of her ears, the pink sweetness of her skin. I counted every eyelash, and watched each rise and fall of her small chest. She gave the tiniest wriggle, and settled herself more completely against me, almost melting into me in recognition. She drew in a deep breath, then, and sighed contentedly, nuzzling her cheek against the skin of my breast. My eyes filled, and I chanced a look at Joe, still standing at the door, protective sentinel between us and the rest of the world.

He gave an infinitesimal nod, then, and cleared his throat. I could see a light sheen of tears in his own eyes, though he wouldn't let them fall. "_This_ was how I knew it would be," he said. I arched an eyebrow at him in query, not wanting to disturb Hope's slumber with my voice. "The way you look at her. Watching you holding her," he elaborated. "The three of us here, together. That's what I always thought it would be like." I held out my hand, then, needing his touch, needing to complete the circle. He knelt beside the wheelchair, then, and slid one arm behind my shoulders, and the other around my own arm, cradling me and his daughter in his strong embrace. I felt his breath on my scalp as he buried his face in my hair.


End file.
